I Hold On Tighter Because I Know How This Ends

The trouble is that you can see it.

Not in a mystical way. You have watched other families do this and you know the shape of it: the leaving, the rooms getting quieter in a particular order, the phone calls that get shorter and then settle into a pattern.

You are not in that yet. You are somewhere in the middle, and the middle is where a person can see both ends at once.

And knowing the shape has not made you calmer. It has made your hands close. The grip has got tighter over the last two years, not looser, and the tightening has been in direct proportion to how clearly you can see.

I am not going to tell you to savor it. You already are, more than is comfortable, and that is most of the problem.

And I am not going to tell you it does not go the way you think. It probably does. That is what makes this different from an ordinary fear.

Thou art my trust from my youth

There is a line in Psalm 71 written by somebody old enough to be looking back over the whole thing.

For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth. (Psalm 71:5, King James Version)

From my youth. That is a person at the far end of a life, describing the whole span of it in one clause.

Psalm 71 is a psalm about age. There is a line in it asking not to be cast off in the time of old age, which is a specific and undignified fear, and the man writing it is not pretending to be above any of it.

You are looking at a psalm written from the far end, and the person writing it has never once pretended the fear was not there. Psalm 71:5 says thou art my trust from my youth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a house where somebody can see the whole shape from the middle.

And notice what the trust is in. Not the outcome. Not the shape of the years.

Thou art my hope. It is a person, named, and the hope is placed in the person rather than in how anything turns out.

You have hope placed in a person rather than in a forecast, and none of it has ever once been about how any of this ends. It is written in Psalm 71:5 that thou art my hope, O Lord GOD, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the hope off an outcome and puts it somewhere it cannot be disappointed.

Foresight is not the gift you thought it was

Now let me name what the seeing is doing, because it has been getting treated as wisdom.

Being able to see the shape of the coming years is real. It is also not information you can act on, because there is no action available. Nothing about the seeing changes anything about the arriving.

And an unusable perception does not sit quietly. It converts into grip, because grip is the only thing a body can do with a thing it can see and cannot alter.

You are watching a body do the one thing available to it, and no part of that has ever once been a decision anybody made. It is written in Psalm 71:5 that the hope is a person rather than a foreseen shape, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes what cannot be used out of a pair of hands.

That is not love expressing itself well. It is love with nowhere to go, doing the one available physical thing, and the person on the other end feels the tightening long before they could name it.

Psalm 71:5 puts the trust in a person rather than in a seen future, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes something unusable out of a pair of hands.

You are holding a perception you cannot act on, and no amount of seeing clearly has ever once changed a single thing about what is coming. Psalm 71:5 fixes the trust on a person rather than on a foreseen shape, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an unusable thing out of a grip.

And here is the plain thing, because two years of tightening has become something.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence of a possessive person who cannot cope with change.

It is foresight with no outlet, in a person who loves somebody, which is one of the most ordinary conditions there is.

You have not become a person who holds on too tightly, and a grip that came from seeing clearly has never once been a fault in the one gripping. The written word places hope in a person rather than in a foreseen future in Psalm 71:5, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to read a tightening as possessiveness.

From my youth is the whole span

One more thing about that phrase, because it is doing something for a person standing in the middle.

From my youth. The man writing it is looking back across every stage he has been through, and he is describing one continuous thing running underneath all of them.

Not a series of arrangements that each ended. One trust, from youth to old age, through every change of circumstance including the ones that felt like losses at the time.

You are held by one thing that has run under every stage you have lived through, and not one of those changes has ever once interrupted it. It is written in Psalm 71:5 that thou art my trust from my youth, and the Spirit of God is the one who is identical at the beginning, the middle and the far end.

That is worth having in the middle. It says that the thing running under this stage is the same thing that ran under the last one and will run under the next, and that the changes did not interrupt it once.

Psalm 71:5 runs one trust across an entire lifetime, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is the same in the middle as at either end.

You are standing on something that has run under every stage without a break, and no change of circumstances has ever once interrupted it. Psalm 71:5 names a trust that goes from youth all the way through, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is the same in the middle as at either end.