The Streak That Broke

Four hundred and six days, and she knew the number without looking, the way you know your own phone number.

It was on an app at first and then it was not on anything, because after about day sixty she did not need the app, she just knew. Day one hundred was a Tuesday. Day two hundred she told one person, her friend Ilse, and Ilse cried, which was more than Sasha expected and she has thought about it since. Day three hundred and sixty-five she bought herself a coffee she does not normally buy, and sat with it, and felt, for about twenty minutes, like a person.

Day four hundred and six was a Thursday and nothing special happened on it, and she does not have a story about why. That is the part nobody believes. There was no crisis, no trigger, no terrible week. It was a Thursday in a fairly ordinary month, and by the evening the streak was over.

That was five weeks ago.

And here is what has actually happened to her since, which is not what people assume. The behavior is back under control; she stopped again the next day, and she has been steady since, and if you charted it you would say she was doing well.

What has not come back is her standing. Because when that counter went to zero, something else went to zero with it, and she has not been able to get it off the floor since. It is as though her entire relationship with God ran on that number, and she never knew it until the number went.

She has not put it in words to anybody. In the foyer after the meeting, with the urns going and everybody talking, she has said fine, twice, to two people who asked.

If your counter has broken, hear the question properly. What did you think it was counting?

Because there is one verse in a very short letter that names who does the keeping, and it does not mention a number.

The keeping was never yours to count

Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.Jude 1:24

Read who the sentence is addressed to. Unto him that is able. This is a doxology; the whole line is aimed at God and the entire content of it is what He is able to do.

Able to keep you from falling. Not: able to help you keep your streak. The keeping is His action, and the person being kept is the object of the verb, not the one performing it.

And to present you faultless. That is the destination and it is His work too. He keeps, and He presents, and both verbs are His, and there is nothing anywhere in that sentence for a person to count.

Sasha has spent four hundred and six days believing she was the one doing the keeping and God was watching the total.

You are being kept by someone who is able, and it is already His keeping and not your count, and the sentence has no number in it anywhere. I am not minimizing five hard weeks. It is written in Jude 1:24, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a doxology written at the end of a very short letter and lays it on a woman in a foyer saying fine to people.

Two things went to zero and only one of them was real

Now here is the specific untangling, and it is the thing to take out of this room.

Two numbers went down on that Thursday. One of them was a real measurement of a real thing: how many days in a row she had done well. That number genuinely went to zero, and it counts for something, and she is right to have valued it.

The other one was not a measurement of anything. It was her sense of standing with God, which had quietly attached itself to the first number, and had begun to rise and fall with it.

Her progress reset. Her position did not, because her position was never on that scale in the first place. It is not the kind of thing that has a counter.

You are in a position that no streak established and no Thursday reset, and it is already fixed by somebody else's work. Scripture says it is by grace ye are saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves (Ephesians 2:8), and the Holy Spirit is the one who unhooks a woman's standing from a number it was never attached to.

Nothing here says the number did not matter

And I want to say this clearly, because Sasha is not a woman who wants to be let off.

The count mattered. Four hundred and six days of steadiness is real, it did real good in her life, and starting again the next day is a genuinely impressive thing that nobody has congratulated her for because nobody knows.

This is not an article telling her the number was foolish. The number was good. It was simply carrying a second job it could not do, and when it broke, the second thing broke with it and did not need to.

So the counter can start again tomorrow, and it should. What must not start again is the assumption that her welcome depends on it.

You are welcome today at four hundred and six and at day one, and it is already the same welcome, and it was never being adjusted by the total. It is written that He is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a welcome steady while a number moves.