The Thing You Never Counted

Rowan knows the state of everything in her life to the nearest anything, and there is one thing she has never counted.

She is not vague. That is the point of this. She is the person other people ask, and she has a mind that does this without effort, and she could give you the shape of her whole situation in about ninety seconds without looking anything up.

Except that one.

She does not avoid it dramatically. She would not describe herself as avoiding it at all, and if you asked her about it she would give you a rough answer immediately and it would be roughly right, and the roughness would sound like carelessness in a woman who is not careless anywhere else.

It came up because a friend, doing something entirely unrelated, said the sort of thing friends say, which was: how much is there, actually?

And Rowan said a rough number, and then said, after a beat, "actually I have never counted it."

And they both laughed, because it was funny, and then Rowan drove home and it was not funny any more.

Here is what she landed on, somewhere around the ring road.

She has not counted it because counting it would make it a quantity. And the moment it is a quantity, it is a thing you can have a view about, and other people can have views about, and it can be compared with other quantities, and decisions can be made about it.

While it stays uncounted it is not any of those things. It is a fog with edges she can feel and never has to look at, and a fog cannot be argued with, and nobody has ever had to make a decision about a fog.

That is what the not counting has been protecting. Not the thing. The right not to have a view.

You have your own version. There is something in your life you have never once added up properly, and everything else you could tell me to the nearest whatever, and the gap between those two facts is not carelessness.

Nobody is asking you for it. There is no ask at the end of this article and no plate anywhere on this site, and I will say that again before the end.

What Jesus warns about is a definition, not an amount

There is a sentence that gets used against people who have things, and it is not about how much anybody has.

Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.Luke 12:15

Consisteth not in. That is the operative phrase and it is not about quantity at all. It is about what a life is made of. He is correcting an equation, not setting a limit, and He never once names a figure in that passage or anywhere near it.

Which cuts in a direction people do not expect. If a life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, then a life does not consist in the smallness of them either. Going without does not construct a life any more than accumulating does. Both are the same equation with the sign flipped, and He is not offering either one.

And now hear what is already true over you. Your life does not consist of it. That is not my encouragement: the written word says exactly that in one clause, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes it land in a woman driving home round a ring road.

And you are already known in full. The word says all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do, and open is the word, so the uncounted thing has never once been uncounted, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a relief rather than an exposure.

Nobody is asking you for anything

I want to be extremely plain now, because this is the paragraph where a message of this kind turns into an appeal, and if it does that it has become the thing this site exists to refuse.

Nobody here wants your thing. Nothing is being asked of you at the end of this article. Nothing here is gated, nothing is held back behind a payment, nobody is going to hint that opening a hand is what makes a person eligible for anything from God. If a page ever does that to you, shut it and do not go back. That applies to this one exactly as much as to any other.

There is no plate. None, anywhere on this site.

And I am not going to tell you to go and count it tonight, either. That is not the instruction and it may not be the right thing for you at all. I do not know what is in the fog and I am not going to guess and then preach at the guess.

And nothing is going to be demanded of you once it has a number on it. That is the fear underneath the not counting, so let it be answered directly: the word says God giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, which is to say He does not give and then hold it over anybody, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a felt safety rather than a fact you were told once.

What the grip is actually round

The reason this belongs in a set of articles about a closed hand is that not looking is a grip. It just does not feel like one, because nothing is clenched.

But the effect is the same. A thing that cannot be looked at cannot be handled, cannot be decided about, cannot be given, kept, moved or enjoyed on purpose. It sits outside all of that in a private fog, and the fog costs something.

What it costs is usually not money. It is that a person carries a low, permanent, unexamined weight, and cannot say what it weighs, and therefore cannot ever put it down.

And you are able to look at it. Not once you feel braver: the word says God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind, and sound mind is the exact faculty this needs, and the Spirit is the one who supplies it rather than leaving it to your nerve.