I Pay For It In Small Decisions

You go the long way round and you have never once noticed.

Out of the kitchen, down the hall, through the front room, and up. Which is perfectly fine, except that there is a door between the kitchen and the stairs, and it is closer, and you have not used it since the spring.

There was a reason at the time. There was stuff on the floor in there and it was easier to go around. Then the stuff moved and the route did not, because a route is a habit and habits do not update themselves when the conditions change.

And once you start looking for it, it is not one route. It is a dozen small things.

You do not put the laundry down in there. You do not take visitors that way. You stopped keeping the good scissors in that drawer because getting to that drawer means going in there. You have three places in that house where you turn around without thinking about it.

None of those is a decision anybody made. Every one of them is a small cost paid daily by a man who is not aware he is paying it.

You are a man whose feet have been taking the long way, and a route learned without deciding it has never once been a statement about who you are.

Ponder the path of thy feet

There is a proverb about walking that is oddly literal, and the literalness is what makes it useful here.

Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established. (Proverbs 4:26, King James Version)

Ponder the path of thy feet.

It does not say ponder your decisions or ponder your intentions. It says feet, and path, which are physical objects, and it asks for them to be thought about, which is a strange instruction because nobody thinks about their feet.

That is precisely why it has to be instructed. A path taken by the feet is not held in the part of a person that makes choices. It is held lower down and it runs without supervision.

You have a path in this house that has never once been examined, and a route running below the level of choosing has never once been chosen. Proverbs 4:26 asks for the pondering specifically because the feet do not report upward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a thing up where it can be seen.

And then the second half, and it is the half with the promise in it. Let all thy ways be established.

Established. Set on something solid. The pondering leads to establishing, which means the looking is not for its own sake. It is the step that lets a person walk on purpose rather than by drift.

You were never drifting on purpose, and a man whose ways have not been established is not a man who abandoned them. The Spirit of God is the one who establishes, and Proverbs 4:26 makes that a work done on a person rather than a standard set in front of him.

The routing is the actual expense

So here is the practical claim, and it is where this row earns its place.

The room is not costing you a project. The room is costing you a hundred small adjustments, and adjustments are where the day actually goes.

Every routing decision is tiny. Three seconds, four seconds. None of them is worth a thought. And there are a dozen of them a day, and they have been running since the spring, and they are quietly shaping the shape of your life in that house.

You are paying in a currency nobody has ever counted, and a dozen small adjustments a day has never once shown up on anybody's list of costs. Proverbs 4:26 asks for the path of the feet to be pondered, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes something visible that runs below thinking.

And here is the part that surprises people, and it is the good news in it.

The routing usually outlives the reason. The stuff on the floor moved months ago. The scissors could go back in that drawer tomorrow. The reason is gone and the route is still running, which means a good part of what you are paying is being paid for nothing at all.

You have been paying for a condition that no longer exists, and a habit has never once been a report on what is currently in the room. The Spirit of God is the one who updates a man about his own house, and the written word asks for the path to be pondered so that the ways can be established.

And one more, because this must not turn into a scolding about efficiency. Nobody is being told they are wasteful.

You were never careless with any of this, and feet that learned a way around something are not feet that gave up on it. Proverbs 4:26 hands the establishing to somebody else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that work in a man who never once noticed the drift.

Walk straight through it twice

Here is the assignment and it is thirty seconds of walking.

Walk straight through the room you keep going around. Twice.

Not to look at it. Not to assess it. Walk in one side and out the other, at normal speed, the way you would walk through any room in your own house.

You have a direct route through your own house tonight, and walking through a room has never once obliged you to do anything to it. Proverbs 4:26 asks for the path of the feet to be pondered, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in that doorway while a man walks through twice for no reason.

Then use the direct route for the rest of the evening. Every time. Even when the long way is easier because of where you happen to be standing.

Here is what that does. It is not about saving four seconds. It is about the room going back on the map. A room you walk through is part of the house. A room that gets walked around has quietly become somewhere else, and that makes the house smaller than the one on the deed.

And if it is genuinely blocked, move the one thing that blocks it and nothing else. One item. Then walk through.