The First Blank Month

Priya bought a paper calendar in August, which she has not done since she was twenty-four, and hung it on the back of the kitchen door.

She turned to September and looked at it.

There is a dentist appointment on the eleventh.

That is the whole of it. One appointment in a thirty-day month, and she stood in her own kitchen with a pen in her hand and felt something go through her that she had absolutely not expected, which was not relief.

For nine years there was no such thing as a blank month. There was an arrangement, and it does not matter here what it was, except that it filled every week and it made every decision and it had a claim on every evening. She came out of it in June. Everybody who knows the story is glad.

And she is glad. That is the part she keeps having to say to herself, standing there.

But she looked at that calendar and what she felt was the sensation of standing at the top of stairs that are not there, and she put the pen down and did not write anything on it, and it has been on the back of the door with one dentist appointment on it for three weeks.

Here is the day it caught.

Her friend, in her kitchen, saw the calendar and said, "Oh, that's nice, look at all that space."

And Priya said, "I know, right?"

And then, later, at the sink, her friend said, "What are you going to do with it?"

And Priya said, "I have no idea," and laughed, and meant it in a way her friend did not hear.

You know that. You came out, correctly, and the thing you got back was a large amount of unclaimed time, and everybody keeps describing it as freedom, and what it actually feels like is a drop.

The verse has two halves and nobody quotes the second

Let me put down what I am not doing tonight, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you what to do with September. I do not know your life, and a stranger filling in another person's calendar from behind a screen is doing something absurd. I am not going to tell you what God is preparing for you, because I do not know that either and I am not going to invent it.

What I will do is read you one verse from the burning bush and point at the half of it that gets left off.

And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.Exodus 3:8

Two purposes in one sentence. To deliver them out. And to bring them up into.

Everybody preaches the first half. Out of the hand of the Egyptians. That is the dramatic half, the one with the plagues and the sea in it.

The second half is where the sentence actually lands, and it is a destination, and it is described before a single Israelite has taken a step. A good land. A large one. Milk and honey.

You were brought out as the first half of a sentence that has a second half in it, and the second half was spoken at the bush before anybody moved. Exodus 3:8 puts the bringing in beside the bringing out in one breath, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and into a kitchen with a blank calendar on the door.

And notice who describes the land. Not Moses. Not the people. God does, at the bush, unprompted, in some detail, to a man who has not agreed to anything yet.

You are not the one responsible for naming what is ahead, and God does the describing in that verse without being asked. It is written that He came down to bring them up unto a good land, and the Holy Spirit is what takes the job of inventing a future out of a person's hands.

The blank is not the destination

Now let me be careful here, because this is where a message like this goes wrong.

Somebody would tell Priya that the blank month is the gift. That the space is the point. That she should enjoy it.

I am not doing that, because it is not true and she would know it is not true. A blank month is not a destination. It is the absence of an arrangement. Those are two different things and confusing them is how a person ends up feeling guilty about something that is genuinely hard.

You are not being handed emptiness and told to call it a promised land, and Scripture describes the destination as full rather than as free. Exodus 3:8 names a good land and a large land flowing with milk and honey, which is a description of contents and not of vacancy, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps a real gap from being renamed as a gift.

And here is what I want to name about the vertigo, because it is not weakness. For nine years every hour had a claim on it. A person who has lived like that does not have practice at wanting things, and wanting is the exact skill a blank calendar requires.

That is not a character flaw. It is a muscle that was never called on.

You have not lost the ability to want something, and what is missing was never developed rather than damaged. Psalm 37:4 speaks of God giving the desires of the heart as something He does rather than something a person manufactures, and the Holy Spirit is the one who builds that at the speed it actually builds.

And say this here rather than at the end, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the empty weeks have gone somewhere darker than disorienting, or if the drop feeling has become most of the day rather than a moment at a calendar, do not sit with that alone. Tell somebody this week. Your friend, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. That is not me telling you a thing about what you came out of. That is me refusing to leave you in that kitchen by yourself.