I Do Not Know What To Do With Myself

There is nothing out there and your days have gone shapeless.

That is the honest description, and it took you a while to arrive at it, because at first you thought you were simply at a loose end and that it would pass in a week.

It has not passed. It is February and the shapelessness has been going since November.

And the thing you have worked out, which nobody else would guess, is that the garden was never mainly about plants.

It was about the shape. There were things that had to be done, in an order, at times, and the doing of them laid a structure across the day that you did not have to design or defend.

You are not at a loose end, and a pair of hands with nothing in them has never once meant a person had nothing.

And now the structure is gone for four months, and what has arrived instead is not peace. It is a slightly unsettled feeling that comes on in the middle of the afternoon and does not have a name.

Let me say the thing that I think has not been said to you.

That feeling is not a problem to be solved by finding another job to do.

He maketh me to lie down

There is a line in the twenty third Psalm that is so familiar that the verb in it goes past unnoticed.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. (Psalm 23:2, King James Version)

He maketh me to lie down.

Now, notice that verb. Maketh. Not invites, not permits, not offers the opportunity. Makes.

Which tells you something about the sheep, and it is the thing worth having: a sheep in a green pasture does not lie down on its own. It has to be made to.

You are not the first creature to need making to lie down, and a reluctance to stop has never once been treated in that psalm as a character fault. Psalm 23:2 uses a word about being made rather than a word about being allowed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a woman unsettled in February.

And notice where the lying down happens. In green pastures.

Not in a barren place where there is nothing to do anyway. In the middle of abundance, with food all around, where every instinct says stay up and keep eating.

That is a much harder place to lie down than an empty field, and it is the place the psalm specifies.

You are being stopped in the middle of plenty rather than in a shortage, and being made to rest has never once been the same as having nothing available. The Holy Spirit is the one who stops a creature surrounded by things it could be doing, and the written word puts the lying down in green pastures on purpose.

And there is no reason given anywhere in that verse. It does not say he maketh me to lie down so that I will be stronger later, or in order that the pasture may recover, or for any purpose at all.

The lying down is not instrumental. It is simply what the shepherd does.

You are not being rested for something, and lying down in that psalm has never once been given a purpose beyond itself. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a creature lie down without explaining what it is for, and the word attaches no outcome to it anywhere.

This is not a gap between seasons

Let me say something plainly, because I think it is the thing the whole row turns on and it is easy to get wrong.

This stretch is not preparation.

There is a version of this that would tell you the fallow months are for planning, for reading, for getting ready, so that you come at the spring better prepared. And that version is very appealing because it gives the shapelessness a job.

But look at what it actually does. It makes the four empty months into a service department for the eight busy ones. Rest that exists in order to improve the work is not rest, it is maintenance.

You are not in a maintenance window, and a season with nothing in it has never once needed to justify itself by what it does for the next one. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a stretch that is not for anything, and Psalm 23:2 has the shepherd making a creature lie down with no purpose named at all.

And I think that is exactly why it is uncomfortable, and it is worth saying so.

A person can tolerate a gap that is for something. You could sit still quite happily for four months if the sitting were productive in some deferred way, because then it would be a kind of work and you would be a person doing something.

What is being asked of you is harder. It is to be somebody who is not doing anything, and to have that be fine, and that is a considerably larger thing than filling the time.

You are being asked for something larger than an occupation, and being a person who is not doing anything has never once been the same as being a person with nothing. The Spirit of God is the one who makes somebody lie down in the middle of plenty, and the written word gives no reason for it and does not apologize for giving none.

Sit down with nothing in your hands

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not an activity.

Sit down in a chair by the window for ten minutes with nothing in your hands.

Not with a cup. Not with something to read that is not really being read. Not with the phone in the lap face down, which is still something in the hands.

Nothing.

You are able to sit with empty hands for ten minutes, and a person doing nothing on purpose has never once been a person wasting a morning. Psalm 23:2 says he maketh me to lie down, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while a woman sits with nothing.

And look out at it. The bare ground, the beds with nothing in them, whatever is out there. Not planning, which is the thing your mind will offer within about ninety seconds.

If the planning starts, and it will, notice it and come back to just looking. That is the exercise. Not the absence of the planning, the coming back from it.

You are able to return from a plan as many times as it arrives, and a mind that goes to work has never once meant a person could not bring it back. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the coming back, and the word describes being made to lie down rather than managing to.

Ten minutes. And that is the whole of the assignment, and I know it does not look like one, and that is the point.