You Left Markers On The Way Out

She thinks she would not know how to begin and she has never once tested that.

It has been twenty-two years. She left slowly, over about four of them, and she could not name the week it finished.

And the picture she has now is of somewhere very far away that she used to be, with no road between here and there. Not blocked. Just absent. As though the leaving dismantled the way as it went.

So when the thought comes, and it comes, she meets it with the same answer.

I would not even know how to start.

That sentence has done a great deal of work for twenty-two years. It sounds practical. It sounds like a woman being realistic about her own situation.

And it has never been examined once, because it is the sort of sentence you say to yourself in a kitchen with nobody there to say: really? Not at all? Not one thing?

She is sixty-seven. She can still recite it, all of it, the whole thing, without hesitating. Her hands still know what to do.

So let me ask you.

What did you notice on the way out that would still be there?

The instruction is given to the ones leaving

There is a verse in Jeremiah that is spoken to a people being carried away from home, and the practical good sense in it is what I love.

Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you take. Return, Virgin Israel, return to your towns.Jeremiah 31:21

Read who is being told and when.

They are being told on the way out. While they are leaving. The instruction is to pay attention to the road as they go along it, because they are going to want it again.

Jeremiah 31 gives the marking of the road to the ones who are departing rather than to the ones returning, and the Spirit who gave that word built the return into the leaving itself, so the road you believe was dismantled behind you has never once been unmarked.

Now, sit down a minute, because I want to say this plainly and I am not in a hurry.

You did mark it. Everybody does. Nobody leaves anything they loved without leaving signs all the way out, and you have been carrying yours the whole time without calling them that.

You can still recite it. That is a marker. Your hands still know what to do. That is a marker. There is a particular time of day that is different for you and always has been, and you have never once mentioned it to anybody. That is a marker.

Jeremiah 31 says take note of the highway, the road that you take, and the Spirit put that noticing into the departure, which means twenty-two years of believing you would not know how to start has been twenty-two years of standing next to your own signposts.

And notice the shape of what is asked at the end of the verse.

Return to your towns. Not to a new place. Not somewhere better suited to who you are now. The towns.

Jeremiah 31 sends them back along a road they already know rather than out on a new one, and the Spirit was in that direction, so needing to work out a way from nothing has never once been the situation you are in.