I Thought It Would Hold This Time

You let yourself believe it that time.

That is what is different about this one, and it is why it has landed harder than the others. The previous times, some part of you was braced. This time, in the week after you finished, you let yourself believe that this was the one that would hold.

You even said something out loud to somebody about it. A light sentence, the kind you would not normally say. And you have thought about that sentence a number of times since.

So what happened three months later was not just the house coming back.

It was hope being taken back, which is an entirely different kind of loss and deserves to be named as one.

I am not going to tell you not to feel that. It is a real loss and you are not being dramatic about it.

What I am going to do is show you where the belief was actually aimed, because I think it was aimed at the wrong thing, and that is the only reason it could be taken away.

You believed that you had held it. That is the part that broke. And the strange mercy underneath this is that holding it was never something you were doing.

Except the Lord build the house

There is a line in Psalm 127 that is usually read as a warning and is actually a relief.

Except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it. (Psalm 127:1, King James Version)

People hear that as a rebuke about self reliance. Read it again with the weight where the psalm puts it.

The psalm is taking something off the builders. It is saying that the holding up of a house was never in their hands to begin with, and that a person who thinks it is will exhaust themselves for nothing, not because they are proud, but because they are attempting something that was never assigned to them.

You are not the one holding this house up, and the holding has never once been what was asked of you. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who said one light sentence out loud and has thought about it since, and Psalm 127:1 puts the building where it actually sits and takes it off the builder.

And now look at what actually broke three months ago.

It was not the house. It was a belief about your own capacity, and specifically a belief that your four days had produced a permanent condition. That belief was always going to break, because it was a belief about something you do not control and never did.

You were holding a belief about your own grip, and that grip has never once been the thing keeping this house standing. The written word takes the outcome out of the builder's hands entirely, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman grieving something she had let herself hope.

Where the hope can go instead

So let me be practical, because taking a belief away without replacing it is cruel and I am not doing that.

The hope was aimed at permanence. Permanence is not available and aiming at it is what keeps costing you.

But there is something that is available, and it is the thing the psalm is actually pointing at: the house is being held, continually, by somebody, and it is not you. That is not a smaller hope. It is a hope that cannot be taken back in three months, because it does not depend on your four days at all.

You have a hope that three months cannot reach, and it has never once depended on anything you did in the spring. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has had hope taken back and is wary of having it again, and Psalm 127:1 makes the keeping of the house God's own work.

And here is what that does to the evenings.

If you are the one holding it up, every returning pile is the grip slipping. If you are not, a returning pile is just a pile, and the evening is eight minutes of tidying rather than eight minutes of losing hold.

You are putting things straight and never holding something up, and no evening in this house has ever once been about your grip. The written word makes the labor vain only when the builder carries what God carries, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been white knuckling her own kitchen without knowing it.

One surface, twice, and nothing believed

So here is tonight, and notice how little is being asked of your hope.

Choose one surface. Clear only that one tonight. Clear the same one again tomorrow.

You are not asked to believe anything about it. You are not asked to expect it to hold. It will not hold and that is fine, and nothing tonight is resting on it.

You are doing something that asks nothing at all of your hope, and your hope has never once had to be spent on a countertop. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman clearing a stretch of counter with no expectations on it, and Psalm 127:1 assigns the outcome to God and leaves the work to the hands.

Here is why the second evening matters specifically for you.

The second evening is the one where it has come back, in miniature, in twenty four hours. And you will clear it, and nothing will have been taken from you, because you did not put anything into it. That is the experience you need: a return that costs you no hope at all.

You are practicing a return that takes nothing from you, and it has never once been possible to lose what you did not stake. The written word puts the standing of the house on God, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman clearing the same surface twice with nothing riding on it.