Letting Go Would Make It Over

Ikaika still has it, and it is not worth anything, and he knows exactly why he still has it.

That is what makes his case different from most. He is not confused and he has not avoided the question. He worked it out years ago, on his own, and having worked it out he did not do anything about it, because knowing why you are holding something and being able to open your hand are two separate abilities and nobody ever tells you that.

The reason is this. As long as it is in the house, the thing it belongs to is not officially finished.

Not in his head. In his head it has been finished for a long time and he is not in any doubt about it. But there is a difference between a thing being over and a person agreeing out loud that it is over, and that object is the last place where the agreement has not been given.

While it sits there, some part of the arrangement is still open. Nothing has been signed. And on the day it goes, something gets signed, and he is the one who has to sign it.

He sat with that on the sand one morning very early, before anybody else was up, and he did not feel anything dramatic about it. He just thought: I am the only one still holding the file open.

Now, I want to stay right here and not rush, because this is a wound and hurrying past a wound is how a message stops being any use.

There is a particular kind of grief that does not look like grief. It has no anniversary and it does not come up in conversation and it may not even have anybody in it. It is the grief of a thing that ended and was never mourned because it did not seem to qualify: a chapter, a plan, a version of a life, a house full of people that is not full of people any more.

Nobody sends anything when that ends. There is no card for it. So a person quietly appoints one object to hold the place, and carries on, and functions perfectly well, and years pass.

If that is you, I am not going to tell you it is a small thing, and I am not going to hurry you off it.

You have your own. It is in a specific place, you could go and put your hand on it in the next two minutes, and you already know what letting go of it would be agreeing to.

Nobody is asking you for it. I want that said early. There is no ask at the end of this article and no plate anywhere on this site.

The exchange in Isaiah is specific, and it is not a tidy up

There is a line in Isaiah that gets quoted at people far too quickly, and read slowly it is much better than the fast version.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.Isaiah 61:3

Three exchanges, and every one of them is an exchange rather than an erasure. He does not say the ashes were nothing. He does not say the mourning was a mistake or that the heaviness was a failure of faith. Each phrase names the real thing first and then names what is given in its place.

And the word for appoint is a legal word. It is the language of a decree, something formally assigned rather than casually offered.

Which matters here more than usual, because a man holding one object so that nothing has to be signed is a man waiting for a decree, and there already is one.

And now hear what is already true over you. Your ashes are named, not dismissed. That is not my sympathy: the written word puts the ashes and the mourning and the heaviness into the sentence by name before it gives anything, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that land in a man sitting on wet sand before anyone else is awake.

And the exchange has already been appointed. Not offered if you are ready: the word uses the language of a decree, and the Spirit is described as the one who was sent to do exactly this work in exactly these people, which means the file was closed by somebody with the authority to close it, and it was not closed by pretending the fire never happened.

Nobody is asking you for anything

I want to be extremely plain now, because this is where a message like this becomes an appeal, and this site would rather not exist than do that.

Nobody here wants your thing. Nothing is being asked of you at the end of this article. Nothing here is held back behind a payment, nothing is gated, and no one is going to suggest that opening your hand is what makes you eligible to receive from God. If a page ever does that to you, shut it and do not go back, and that goes for this one too.

There is no plate. There never has been one and there will not be.

And I am not telling you to get rid of the object. Hear that clearly, because it is the thing people expect at this point and it is not coming. Keep it. Some things should be kept, and a house with nothing old in it is not a healthier house.

And nothing about your standing has been waiting on this. The word says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit that this has been settled the whole time you have been holding the file open on the other matter.

What the grip is actually round

The question worth an evening is not should I let go of it, which arrives too early and makes everybody defensive.

It is: what would opening my hand be agreeing to?

Because that is answerable, alone, tonight, and it is nearly always something a person has never once said in a sentence. It is over. They are not coming back. That version of the house is finished. I am not going to do the thing I always said I would do.

And here is the part worth having: saying it does not make it true. It was already true. Saying it only stops you being the last person carrying the weight of not having said it.

And you will not be alone in the saying. Not once you are stronger: the word says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and nigh is a proximity word rather than an emotional one, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a felt nearness in a specific room at a specific hour.

And nothing is being taken from you in the exchange. He gives beauty for ashes, says the written word, which is the grammar of a trade and not of a confiscation, and the Spirit is the one who carries that from a sentence into a body.