20 days until we drove away from our home with belongings packed or stored.
28 days until Drew starts his fellowship.
40 days until I begin a new educational endeavor.
57 days until first-born enters kindergarten.
146 days until this baby boy is due to enter the world
391 days until all is returned home.

All the days feel exposed and vulnerable for their temporary status.  To live in the temporary is to live exposed to time’s quick short-hand, the tick-tock sound ringing constantly in my ears.  It keeps the beat as the counted moments go by.

Temporary time can feel light and echo freedom.
Temporary time can feel heavy and isolating.
Temporary time can feel like PAUSE and GO at the same time.

All inter-twined together, temporary time might be one of the most honest times I have ever knowingly approached.  It’s truth time.  It’s time revealed for what it is – gift given but never owned.  I cannot rush it and I cannot slow it down.  I cannot even say which I would choose.

Just like the home we will occupy, the days are for rent.

To live in this temporary time requires that I let go of my inclination to build, gather, and secure.  I must, instead, lean into the invitation to receive, to be present, to wait, to disperse, and to expand.

“You shall not sow, or reap the after growth, or harvest the unpruned vines…
You shall eat only what the field itself produces” (Leviticus 25:11-12)

Perhaps it’s my year of jubilee… my year of stopping my production to remember and re-learn how to trust the One who is producing.

“The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but strangers and tenants.  Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.” (verses 23-24)

Then as I return, perhaps I will have learned my rhythm in the temporary, truth-telling time.  Perhaps I will know intimately the practice of renting days so that owning days will be too obviously illusion… dream sold by a world that cannot dare to even acknowledge temporary time.

Whatever may come, may I be found as the tenant of the long days and short years… pausing and giving thanks for the land I rent, praising the Owner and working for its redemption.