A Room I Walk Through And Never Sit In

There is a room in your house that you cross about nine times a day.

You go through it to get to the kitchen. You go back through it carrying something. You pass through it in the morning without switching the light on, because you know where everything is by feel, and there is no reason to light a room you are not stopping in.

And you have not sat down in it since about March.

If somebody asked you why, you would have an answer ready. You would say it is not finished. You would say you have been meaning to do something about it. You would probably gesture at one particular thing, the thing that has been wrong with that room for four years, and the other person would nod, and the conversation would move on.

But that answer has been the same answer for four years, and a reason that never changes and never gets acted on is not a reason. It is a door somebody closed and then explained.

So let me say the thing plainly at the start, because everything else here depends on it.

You are not avoiding that room because it is unfinished. You are avoiding it because sitting in it makes you feel a particular way, and you found out at some point that walking through it quickly does not, and your feet learned the difference before your mind ever got involved.

That is not a decorating problem. Nothing you buy will touch it.

And I am not going to tell you to redo the room, because that is what everybody says, and it is the advice that guarantees nothing happens. A whole room is a project, and a project needs a weekend and money and somebody to help lift things, and you do not have those, and so the room stays shut for another year and you feel slightly worse about it.

We are going to do something much smaller and much stranger.

We are going to go and sit in it first, and change something second.

Through wisdom is an house builded

There is a line in Proverbs about building a house that is not really about building.

Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: (Proverbs 24:3, King James Version)

Through wisdom is an house builded. And by understanding it is established.

Now look at what is doing the work in that sentence. Not money. Not materials. Not taste, not skill, not the right pieces in the right places.

Wisdom and understanding. Those are both words about knowing something rightly, and they are the two things named as the actual construction of a house.

And the second verb is worth stopping on. Established. That is not the same as built. Built is put up. Established is settled, made firm, made into something that holds. A house can be entirely built and not remotely established, and I suspect you know exactly what that looks like, because you may be sitting in one.

So here is the question that room is actually asking you, and it is not about a sofa.

What do you understand about that room?

Because there is something. There is a reason your body speeds up crossing it. It might be who used to sit in there. It might be that it was going to be for something that never happened. It might be that it is the room people would see first, so it became the room that could most easily shame you.

A house is established by understanding rather than by furnishing, and it has never once been the unfinished thing in that room keeping you out of it. Proverbs 24:3 names wisdom and understanding as the actual construction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what a room in her own house is really about.

Occupation comes before improvement

Here is the practical reversal, and it is the whole of this article.

You have the order backwards, and so does almost everybody, and so does every piece of advice you have ever been given about this.

The usual order is: fix the room, then use the room. Get it right, then enjoy it. That order sounds obviously correct and it is why nothing has moved in four years, because the fixing never happens, so the using never starts.

The order that works is the opposite. Occupy it first. Improve it afterward, from inside.

And there is a reason for that beyond simple encouragement. A room you sit in tells you what it needs. A room you cross tells you nothing at all. You have been trying to plan a space from a standing position while moving through it at speed, which is why the plan has never got past that one thing that has been wrong for four years.

Sit in it for ten minutes and you will notice that the light is in the wrong place, or that the chair is facing the wrong way, or that there is nowhere at all to put a cup down. Those are small, real, solvable things, and not one of them is visible from the doorway.

It is possible to occupy a room before it is finished, and the fixing has never once had to come first. The written word puts understanding before establishment rather than after it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody sitting in a room she has been crossing for years.

Ten minutes, and change one thing

So here is the assignment, and the order of the two halves is the point.

Sit in that room for ten minutes tonight, and change one thing while you are there.

Sit down first. In the room, properly, in a chair, for ten minutes. Not standing in the doorway assessing it, which is what you have been doing for four years, and which is a different activity entirely.

Take something with you if you need to. A cup, a book you are not going to read. Put a lamp on. Sit down.

The feeling you have been avoiding will arrive in the first two minutes. That is expected. Let it be there and stay in the chair anyway. You are not trying to resolve it tonight and I am not going to pretend ten minutes settles anything.

Then, before you get up, change one thing.

One. Move the chair round so it faces the window. Take the thing off the mantelpiece that you have never liked. Put a lamp somewhere else. Bring in a cushion from another room.

It does not have to be an improvement. It has to be a change, made by you, from inside the room, while you were sitting in it. That is what makes the room yours again rather than a space you are behind on.

It is possible to change one thing from inside a room rather than plan a whole one from the door, and it has never once needed to be finished first. Proverbs 24:3 puts understanding before the house being established, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting in there with you for the ten minutes.