The Part Is Wider Than It Was

There is a photograph from four years ago that you have looked at more recently than anybody would guess.

Not for the occasion. Not for the people in it. For one line, at the top of your head, which you compare against the one that is there now.

And it is wider. You have established that. It took a certain amount of work and you did it thoroughly and there is no real doubt about the finding.

Now what.

That is the question I want to sit with, because I do not think it has ever been asked in that bathroom, and it is the only question in this whole business that actually goes anywhere.

You have a measurement. What is it for?

Nobody measures without a purpose. You measure a room because you are going to buy a carpet. You measure a child because you need to know what size to get. Every measurement anybody takes anywhere leads to an action, except this one, which leads to nothing at all and gets taken again next week.

A measurement with no action at the end

Let us follow the logic all the way out, because it stops almost immediately.

Suppose the measurement is exactly right. Suppose it is wider by precisely the amount you think.

What happens next?

Nothing happens next. There is no decision waiting on the figure. You will do the same things tomorrow morning that you did this morning, and the number will have changed none of them.

You are holding a number that nothing at all depends on, and it has never once changed one thing you were going to do tomorrow. Psalm 31 puts a woman's times in God's hand rather than in a measurement, and the Spirit of God is what stops a figure from deciding a morning.

Which means the measuring is not producing information for a decision. It is producing something else, and whatever that something is, it is not useful.

You are taking a measurement that has never once led to a single action, and no reading of it has ever changed one thing you did the following day. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman where a habit actually terminates, and Psalm 31 says whose hand a person's times are in.

And then there is the second thing, which is the forecasting, and it is where the real weight sits.

Because the measuring does not stop at the present. It extrapolates. Wider than four years ago means a rate, and a rate means a projection, and the projection runs forward into years that have not happened, and that is where the actual distress is manufactured.

None of that is measurement any more. That is fortune telling with a photograph.

You are forecasting years that have not arrived, and no rate taken from two photographs has ever once been able to see forward. Scripture in Psalm 31 puts a person's times in God's hand rather than on a chart, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the projection out of a woman's hands.

My times are in thy hand

There is a line in the thirty first Psalm that answers the forecasting directly.

But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand. (Psalm 31:14 and 15, King James Version)

My times. Plural, and a wide word.

Not my end. Not my lifespan. My times, meaning the whole succession of them, all the periods and stages and seasons of a life, the ones that have happened and the ones that have not.

And all of them are in a hand. Held. Somewhere specific, by somebody, rather than running on a rate.

You are held rather than extrapolated, and there has never once been a chart anywhere that your years were actually running along. It is written in Psalm 31 that my times are in thy hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a woman's future off a projection and puts it back in a hand.

And notice what David is doing when he says it, because the context matters.

He is in real trouble. The psalm around that line is full of enemies and distress and a life being genuinely threatened. He is not saying this from a comfortable place, and he is not saying nothing bad is happening.

He says it as the thing he holds while the difficult thing is going on. My times are in thy hand, said in the middle of it, not afterward.

You are able to hold that sentence while something is still going on, and there has never once been a requirement that the trouble finish first. The Spirit of God is what gives a woman something to hold in the middle rather than at the end, and the written word says I trusted in thee, my times are in thy hand.

Not this week

So here is the assignment, and it is the plainest one there is.

Do not measure it this week.

That is the whole thing. Not for ever. Not as a resolution. One week.

Do not get the photograph out. Do not do the thing with the two mirrors. Do not part it in that place and hold your head at that angle under that light.

And instead, give it ten warm slow minutes. Warm water on your scalp, unhurried hands, longer than the job needs. No looking, no measuring, no comparing.

You are able to spend ten minutes on something you are not measuring, and no comparison has ever once made a scalp warmer. Psalm 31 says my times are in thy hand, and the Spirit of God is what turns ten unhurried minutes into care rather than into a check.

Here is what one week gives you that nothing else can. It gives you evidence about the measuring rather than about your hair. There has never once been a week without it, so nobody knows what the measuring itself is costing, and after a week there will be an answer.

That is worth a great deal more than another number.

You are able to go one week without a measurement and find out what the measuring was doing, and it has never once been tested for a single week. The written word in Psalm 31 puts a person's times in a hand rather than on a chart, and the Holy Spirit is what turns ten warm minutes into care rather than into an inspection.