The First Thing Since I Was A Girl

You were eight or nine the last time this happened.

There was a garden that belonged to somebody, a grandmother probably, and you were given a corner of it or a pot, and something came up, and you remember it with the particular brightness that early things have.

And then nothing, for the whole of a life. Not from a decision. It simply was not one of the things your life turned out to contain.

And now there is a green thing in a pot on your table, and the feeling that arrived with it was not the feeling you expected.

You are the same person who did this as a girl, and sixty years in between have never once made you two different people.

Because what you expected, if you had thought about it, was something mild. A small pleasant satisfaction at a small pleasant thing.

What actually happened was that you were about eight years old for a second.

And that has unsettled you, and I do not think it should, and I want to spend this article on it rather than on the plant.

Even to your old age I am he

There is a line in Isaiah that runs a person's whole life along one sentence, and the grammar of it is the comfort.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4, King James Version)

Even to your old age I am he.

Now, the verse just before this one speaks of being borne from the belly and carried from the womb. So the sentence runs from before a person could remember anything to the gray hairs, and it is one continuous line with one subject.

You are inside a sentence that starts before your memory and has not ended, and Scripture has never once broken a life into a girl and a separate old woman. Isaiah 46:4 carries the same person from the womb to hoar hairs in one breath, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a woman who was briefly eight at her own kitchen table.

And the phrase that does the work is I am he.

Not I was. Not I will be. The same, across the whole span, and the continuity is stated about God rather than about the person, which is what makes it hold.

You are held together by somebody who has never once changed across the whole of your life, and a continuous person has never been something anybody had to maintain themselves. The Holy Spirit is the one who is the same across sixty years of a life, and the written word puts the sameness on God's side of the sentence.

And there is the repetition at the end, which is not accidental. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.

Four verbs, all of them His, stacked. Nobody is asked to do anything in that verse.

You were carried through the whole of the gap without doing one thing to be carried, and a stretch of years with nothing in it has never once been a stretch a person walked alone. The Spirit of God is the one doing every verb in that line, and the word gives the person in it nothing at all to perform.

You did not become somebody else

Let me say what I think unsettled you, because I do not think it was joy and I do not think it was nostalgia.

It was the discovery that she is still in there.

Sixty years went into becoming somebody. A competent woman, with a history, who has done a great many things and buried some people and knows how the world goes.

And then a green thing came up in a pot and for about a second none of that was operating, and an eight year old was looking at it, and that is disorienting because it suggests the sixty years are a layer rather than a replacement.

You are not a replacement for the girl who did this once, and sixty years of becoming somebody has never once been the same as somebody else moving in. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person continuous, and Isaiah 46:4 runs one line from the womb to the gray hairs without a break anywhere in it.

And that is not a loss of dignity, though I suspect it felt slightly like one.

A woman of your age who can still be eight for a second has not lost her footing. She has kept something that most people assume is gone and stop checking for.

You are holding something most people have stopped looking for in themselves, and a capacity that surfaced after sixty years has never once been a capacity that had left. The Spirit of God is the one who kept it intact through the whole stretch, and the written word says I am he across the entire length of a life.

Say both ages out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is two numbers.

Say your two ages out loud, the one from then and the one from now.

I was eight. I am seventy four. Whatever the numbers actually are.

You are able to put both ends of your own life into one sentence, and two numbers said out loud have never once been too small a thing to hold a life together with. Isaiah 46:4 runs from the womb to hoar hairs in a single line, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that table while a woman says two numbers.

Here is why this and not something more elaborate.

Because the disorientation comes from the two feeling separate. The girl and the woman are being held as two people, and one of them turned up unexpectedly in the other one's kitchen.

Putting both numbers in one sentence, in one breath, in your own voice, is the smallest possible act of joining them. It is not a technique and it will not do anything dramatic. It simply puts them side by side where they have always actually been.

You are able to say the two ends together, and a life stated in one breath has never once needed anything more than that to be one life. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds the continuity that the sentence only names, and the word puts the whole span under one unchanging I am he.

And then go and look at the pot again. That is the second half and it is not decorative. Look at it as the woman of seventy four, on purpose, having just said both numbers.