I Am Not Ready To Wash The Pillowcase

It is a pillowcase.

That is the part that makes it hard to say out loud. If it were a wedding ring, or a coat, or the last letter, anybody would understand it instantly. It is a pillowcase, and the wash goes on around it every week, and that one has not been in.

Nobody knows. Your sister has been in that room. She has no idea.

And here is the sentence you have said in your own head, probably a hundred times, in a slightly impatient voice that sounds like somebody else: it is a pillowcase.

That voice has been using the smallness against you.

I want to do the opposite today, and I want to be plain about it at the top. Nothing in this article asks you to put it in the wash. Not today, not as a first step, not at all.

What I want to take away is the smallness being used as evidence. Because the size of a thing has never once been the measure of what it holds, and there is a whole shape in scripture for exactly this and it is not a soft one.

He came to mourn

There is a line in Genesis about Abraham that records an arrival and a purpose.

And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. (Genesis 23:2, King James Version)

Came to mourn. That is a journey undertaken for the express purpose of grieving.

He did not come to arrange things. He did not come to be efficient. The text records the purpose as mourning and weeping, gives it its own sentence, and moves on without a single word of comment about duration or dignity.

You are doing what a patriarch traveled a distance to do, and grieving on purpose has never once needed justifying. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman standing at the side of a made bed, and Genesis 23:2 names the mourning as the reason for the journey.

And look at what scripture does with small things everywhere else.

A widow's two coins. A boy's five loaves. A cup of cold water. The whole pattern of the book is that the size of the object is never the measure of what it carries, and heaven pays attention to the small ones specifically.

You are protecting something small in a book that has always taken small things seriously, and its size has never once counted against it. The written word attends to two coins and a cup of water by name, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has never told her own sister about a pillowcase.

Why it is that and not something else

Let me say the thing about the pillowcase that nobody has said to you.

It is not a symbol. You did not choose it. The ring is a symbol and the letters are a symbol, and those are handled carefully because everybody knows what they are.

The pillowcase is not a symbol. It is the last thing in that house that nobody curated. It carries an ordinary night, which is the thing you actually miss, and no symbol can carry that.

You are holding the one ordinary thing in the house, and the ordinary has never once been the lesser thing to miss. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who misses an ordinary Tuesday night more than any occasion, and Genesis 23:2 gives a mourning its own line without measuring what it was for.

And here is why the impatient voice is wrong about the smallness.

A small thing being protected is not a sign that grief has become disproportionate. It is a sign that the enormous thing is being held somewhere a person can actually reach, which is what human beings do and have always done.

You have put something enormous somewhere you can reach it, and doing that has never once been a distortion. The written word takes a journey for the sake of weeping and never once explains itself, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been told off by a voice in her own head.

One door, and the bed is untouched

So here is today, and the bed is not in it.

Open a door. A wardrobe, a drawer, the room. Open it, look, and close it again.

You are opening something with nothing required on the other side, and looking has never once begun a process. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman with her hand on a wardrobe door, and Genesis 23:2 records a mourning with no instruction after it.

Here is why a door rather than the pillowcase.

The pillowcase is not available today and that is fine, and I am not going to pretend a smaller version of it exists. What is available is one ordinary act of going toward rather than away, done deliberately, at a size you can be sure of.

And the pillowcase stays exactly where it is while that happens.

You have gone toward something at a size you can be sure of, and certainty about the size has never once been avoidance. The written word lets a man come a distance simply in order to grieve, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman closing a wardrobe and leaving a bed alone.