One Day She Will Sign It

It began with a form.

She was signing something at a bank, and watched her own hand do the thing it has done ten thousand times, and thought: one day she will do this.

And ever since, every name on the list has been tested against a signature. How it starts. Whether the letters run. What the shape of it is at the bottom of a mortgage application in 2065.

And it is not only signatures now. That was the first one and it opened a door.

Now there is the name being read out at a graduation. The name on a name badge at a first job. The name said by a doctor calling somebody through. The name at the top of a wedding invitation. The name said by somebody at a funeral, one day, a long way off, about somebody who by then will have been alive for eighty years.

She is carrying an entire life at once. Not a decision. A life, in one afternoon, in her head, in week twenty two.

And of course it is unbearable. Nobody could carry that. It is not a failure of nerve. She has taken on a load that was not designed to be lifted in a single piece.

Teach us to number our days

There is a request in Psalm 90, in a psalm about how short a life is, and the request is a strange one until you see what it is for.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, King James Version)

You are being taught to count in days and not in decades, and Psalm 90:12 has never once handed anybody a whole life to hold at one time. The written word asks for days, one at a time, as a thing that has to be learned, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that teaching in somebody carrying eighty years in an afternoon.

Notice that it is a request. Teach us. Which means this is not natural and does not arrive on its own. Left alone, a person does the opposite: they take the whole thing at once, the way she has, and they are crushed by it.

And notice the purpose given. That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. The counting by days is not resignation. It is the condition under which a person can think clearly at all.

You have been trying to hold a thing Scripture says must be numbered in days, and the psalm treats that as a skill to be taught. The Spirit of God is the one who answers that prayer in a person, and Psalm 90 asks for it as a request rather than assuming it.

What the signature cannot tell anybody

Now the practical part, and it is about the test itself.

The signature test cannot be run and it is worth saying why precisely.

A signature is not a name. It is a person's handwriting, developed at about fifteen, out of their own temperament and how fast they write and what they were taught and who they wanted to be at that age. Two people with identical names produce completely different signatures, and neither of them was determined by the letters.

So the thing being tested is not available in the word, and the blank that comes back is not a verdict on anything.

You are running a test on a thing the name does not contain, and no verse anywhere asked anybody to see forty years out. Psalm 90:12 asks for the numbering of days, and the Holy Spirit is what releases somebody from a test with no answer in it.

And there is something else about that whole list of scenes, and it is worth laying out because it is doing real damage.

Not one of those moments requires a decision from her today. The graduation, the badge, the invitation, the funeral: every one of them will be attended by a person who is already living, with a name that is already hers, and none of them will contain a woman weighing syllables.

She is the only person in any of those rooms who will ever think about the choosing. Everybody else will simply be there, saying a name that has belonged to somebody for decades.

You are the only one in those rooms who will ever think about this, and Scripture asks for today rather than for the whole account. Psalm 90 numbers the days deliberately, and the Spirit of God is what keeps a person from living in years that have not arrived.

One day only

So here is the assignment, adapted, and it is a deliberate narrowing.

Say the name out loud, in a full sentence, about one day only.

Not about a life. Not about a signature or a graduation. About one ordinary day: the first morning. She is here and this is her name. Or a Tuesday in about two years: she is asleep and I am going to leave her.

One day. Out loud, in a full sentence.

You are able to take one day at a time today, and Psalm 90:12 has never once asked anybody to hold more than that. The Holy Spirit is present when somebody puts down seventy nine years and picks up one, and the written word asks for days to be numbered.

Because a name said about one day is a name. A name said about a whole life is a monument, and monuments cannot be chosen in a kitchen at week twenty two.

And there is something that happens in the body when a person does this. The chest loosens. It is a physical thing and it arrives within a few seconds, and it is worth noticing when it happens, because it is the difference between a life held all at once and a life handed over a day at a time.

You are permitted to hand back the other seventy nine years, and Scripture asks for the counting of days so that a heart can be applied to wisdom. Psalm 90 makes the narrowing the condition of thinking clearly, and the Holy Spirit is with a woman saying it about one day today.