The Room I Shut After The Funeral

You shut it on a Tuesday in November.

You remember the day because everything about that week is in extreme focus, in a way the rest of that year is not. People came and went. Somebody made too much food. And at some point in the afternoon you went upstairs, and you closed that door, and you came back down.

That was not a decision. Nobody decided anything that afternoon. It was a hand on a door in the middle of a day that was being got through.

And then it stayed shut, because there was no day on which anybody said the shutting was over.

Two years now. The handle has been touched to check, and the door has been closed round from the outside when it drifted, and nobody in that house has been in it.

And here is what has started to bother you, which is not the room.

You have started to feel that the shutting was a decision after all. That by not opening it you have been choosing, every day, for two years, and that the choice says something about how you are managing.

I want to take that apart, because you did not choose anything in November, and the thing you have been prosecuting yourself for was never an act of will.

She laid him down and shut the door

There is a moment in second Kings where a woman does something with a door that the text records without one word of comment.

And she went up, and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door upon him, and went out. (2 Kings 4:21, King James Version)

She laid him on the bed, shut the door upon him, and went out.

Nobody in that narrative says anything about it. Nobody suggests she should have stayed, or that shutting the door was denial, or that it indicated something about how she was coping. She shut it and went out and got on with what had to be done next.

You are the woman who shut a door on the worst day of her life, and shutting it has never once been a thing to answer for. Second Kings 4:21 records a door shut in the middle of a catastrophe and passes no judgment on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who remembers a Tuesday in November in extreme focus.

And notice what she does immediately afterward.

She goes and finds a donkey and travels to get help. The shutting of the door is not the end of anything and it is not avoidance. It is what a person does with a room in the middle of a day that has to be got through.

You were shutting a door in a day that had to be got through, and that has never once been the same as giving up on the room. The written word records the closing without explanation and moves straight on, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has been examining her own hand on a handle two years later.

It was never a decision

Let me be precise about November, because the precision matters.

On that afternoon nobody was weighing options. Nobody weighs options on that afternoon. There was a room and a door and a hand, and the hand closed the door because that is what a hand does in a house full of people and food and a coffin that has already gone.

That is not a choice. It is a reflex in a day nobody is conscious during.

You were not choosing anything on that afternoon, and no reflex in that week has ever once been a decision. Second Kings 4:21 has a woman shut a door and go out with no deliberation recorded, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land for a woman who has been building a case out of a reflex.

And here is where the prosecution came from.

Two years of a shut door looks like sustained choosing, from outside and from inside. It is not. It is one reflex in November plus an absence of any moment since that said otherwise.

Nobody ever came and said: the shutting is over now. So it continued, not by choice, but by nothing having ended it.

You have had no moment that ended it, and the continuing has never once been you choosing it again each morning. The written word closes the door and passes on without a word, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been sentencing herself for a hand on a handle.

Two minutes, and nothing moved

So here is today, and it is the moment that has never come.

Walk into the room. Stay for two minutes. Leave without moving anything.

Nothing gets sorted. Nothing gets decided. The door can be shut again after, and probably will be, and that is entirely fine.

You are able to go in and shut it again afterward, and shutting it again has never once undone the going in. Second Kings 4:21 records a shutting with no verdict and no timeline, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing in a room she has not been in for two years.

And here is what the two minutes ends.

It ends the run. After today, the door has been opened once since November, which makes everything since a different shape. Not resolved. Different.

You are ending a run rather than a season, and ending a run has never once required the season to be over. The written word simply shows a woman shutting a door and getting on, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land for a woman standing still in an upstairs room on an ordinary afternoon.