I Do My Thinking Somewhere Else

You do your best thinking in the car.

Or in the parking lot before you go in somewhere. Or on the walk back from taking somebody to the door. Or, if we are being completely honest about it, sitting in the driveway with the engine off for four minutes before you come inside.

Nobody has ever remarked on it, including you, because it looks like a perfectly ordinary habit and half the people you know have some version of it.

But here is the question that is worth asking once, plainly. Why is the car easier than the kitchen.

The kitchen is warmer. The kitchen has a chair. The kitchen has a cup of tea in it, and the car has none of those things and is frequently cold.

And the answer, when you go looking for it, turns out not to be about the car at all. It is that the kitchen has three unfinished things in it, and the mind will not settle in a room where something is outstanding, and the car has nothing outstanding in it whatsoever.

So a woman ends up doing her real thinking in a stationary vehicle, and paying for the privilege in fuel and cold hands, and never once asking what it means.

You are a woman who is allowed to think in her own kitchen, and a house with work standing in it has never once stopped being a place where you belong.

The sparrow hath found an house

There is an image in the eighty fourth psalm that people race past on the way to the more famous verses, and it is about a bird finding somewhere to be.

Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God. (Psalm 84:3, King James Version)

The sparrow hath found an house.

It is a small bird and an unimpressive one and the psalm gives it a house. Not a perch, not a shelter, a house. And it gives the swallow a nest, and it specifies that the nest is for herself.

For herself. That is an extraordinary phrase to find in a psalm about the courts of God. Somebody small has a place that is hers.

You have somewhere that is yours in the plainest sense of the word, and the size or state of it has never once decided whether a place belongs to you. Psalm 84:3 gives a sparrow a house without a word about the standard of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a statement about belonging rather than about property.

And notice where the nest is. Even thine altars, O LORD of hosts. The birds have built in the middle of the place where the real work happens.

That is not a quiet corner set aside for them. That is right in among it, and nobody moves them on, and the psalm thinks this is wonderful rather than untidy.

You were never required to find a room with nothing going on in it, and a nest in the middle of unfinished work has never once been an unsuitable nest. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a working place a dwelling place, and Psalm 84:3 puts the birds among the altars and calls it good.

Why the mind will not settle in there

So here is the practical part, and it explains the car completely.

A room with outstanding work in it keeps a low signal running. Not a thought, and not guilt. Just a background note that says there is something here, which is enough to keep the mind from going fully quiet.

The car has no such note. Nothing in a car is your responsibility in that way. So the mind settles instantly, and you have learned, without ever deciding it, that the car is where thinking happens.

You are not choosing the car and you never once were, and a mind that goes quiet in one place and not another has never once been making a judgment about a house. Psalm 84:3 gives a bird a house in the middle of a working place, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can make a kitchen quiet without the kitchen changing.

And here is what it has cost, and it is worth saying because it is not obvious.

Your own house has quietly become a place you do things in rather than a place you are. You cook there, you clean there, you deal with things there. The being happens in a car in a driveway.

You have been living in a house and dwelling in a vehicle, and a home has never once been meant to be somewhere a woman only works. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a nest for herself, and the written word uses that exact phrase in Psalm 84:3 about somebody very small.

And there is a mercy in the diagnosis. Nothing about this requires the kitchen to be finished first.

You have permission tonight that does not wait on any of it, and a woman sitting down in her own kitchen has never once needed the room to be ready for her. Psalm 84:3 puts the nest among the altars rather than in a cleared space, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a room with three things standing in it.

Twenty minutes in your own kitchen

Here is the assignment and it is an ordinary evening with one change in it.

Sit in your own kitchen for twenty minutes with a cup of something and do your thinking there.

Not in the car. Not in the driveway. At the table, in the room with the three unfinished things in it, on purpose.

You have twenty minutes and a chair in your own house tonight, and sitting down in a working room has never once required the work to be done. Psalm 84:3 gives a swallow a nest for herself in the middle of the altars, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that table for the whole twenty minutes.

The first five will not work. Expect that. The signal will run and you will notice the three things and your hand will want to start tidying something.

Do not tidy. That is the one rule. Tidying is the signal winning, and this is not a tidying exercise, and the room is allowed to stay exactly as it is.

Around minute eight or nine it usually drops. And then the thinking is happening in your own kitchen, which is where a person is supposed to be able to think, and it cost nothing but the sitting.