The Drawer I Have Walked Past For Six Years

You go past it maybe fourteen times a day.

The handle is right there at the height of your hand. You have opened the drawer above it this week and the one beside it this morning, and that one you have not properly opened since a long time before the year turned.

Six years, if you count it honestly, and you have never once counted it honestly because counting it would make it a thing.

It is not dramatic. There is nothing terrible in there. It is odds and ends and a couple of envelopes and something of your mother's, and none of that explains why your hand goes past it fourteen times a day without stopping.

That is the part worth talking about. Not what is in the drawer. The hand that has learned to go past.

Because a hand does not learn that on its own. Something taught it, once, and then the teaching stayed on long after whatever taught it stopped mattering.

And here is the thing about a circuit like that: nobody is keeping you on it. There is no one at the end of the hall enforcing it. You have been walking a route around your own kitchen for six years under nobody's orders, and that is the part God has an opinion about.

Long enough around this mountain

There is a sentence in Deuteronomy that God says out loud about a circuit people had been walking for a very long time.

Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward. (Deuteronomy 2:3, King James Version)

Notice who says when it has been long enough.

Not the people. They had been going around that mountain for years and had presumably stopped experiencing it as going around anything at all. It had become the shape of the days. It took a voice from outside the circuit to name the circuit and to call a stop on it.

You have been going around something long enough that it stopped registering as going around, and it has never once taken your permission to end it. Deuteronomy 2:3 has God name the circuit and call time on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman whose hand goes past a handle fourteen times a day.

And look at the instruction that follows. Turn you northward.

Not: reflect on why you have been circling. Not: understand the mountain. Turn. One change of direction, given as an ordinary instruction to people who were already walking, and the walking was never the problem.

You are already moving past it fourteen times a day, and the turn has never once required more strength than the walking did. The written word gives a direction and not an explanation, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman standing still in her own hallway for the first time in six years.

What put the hand on that route

Here is what is usually underneath a drawer like that, and none of it is a character flaw.

Something in there needs a decision, and the decision is small and slightly sad, and six years ago it was not a decision anybody in that house could have made. So it got gone past, once, on purpose.

The second time was easier. By the twentieth it was not a decision at all, it was the route, and by year three the drawer had stopped being a drawer and become a thing you do not do.

You were protecting yourself once with a completely sensible detour, and the detour has never once been a fault in you. Deuteronomy 2:3 does not scold anybody for the years of circling, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land for a woman who has just understood her own kitchen.

And this is why willpower has been the wrong tool.

Nothing in you is refusing. There is no resistance to overcome, which is why every time you have told yourself firmly that you will do it this weekend, nothing has happened. You cannot push against a thing that is not pushing back. A route is not an enemy. It is a groove, and grooves are left, not defeated.

You have nothing in you that is refusing, and the groove has never once been the same thing as resistance. The text says turn, which is what a person does with a route, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been calling a groove a failure.

Turning is a small physical act

So the instruction today is not to understand the drawer. It is to open it.

Opening it is about four seconds of work. The six years were never in the drawer, they were in the walking past, and the walking past ends the first time the hand stops.

You are four seconds from ending a six year circuit, and the circuit has never once been longer than the hand that keeps it going. Deuteronomy 2:3 puts a turn where the years were, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman whose fingers are on the handle and not moving.

And I want to say what happens next, because it is less than you fear.

You will empty it onto the counter. Most of it will be nothing. One or two things will be the reason, and you will look at them, and you will put them back, because nothing in this asks you to part with one item in that drawer.

You are opening it and keeping every single thing in it, and opening has never once been the first step toward losing anything. The written word calls for a turn and says nothing at all about what the people had to leave behind, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land for a woman holding an envelope she has not held in six years.