The Room Is Done And I Am Still Me

The room is done and you are exactly the same.

That is the finding, and it arrived quietly, some time in the week after. Not as a thought. As a slow recognition that the evening after it was finished was very like the evening before it was finished, and so was the one after that.

And here is what is underneath that, said plainly, because it is worth saying plainly.

You were not only painting a room. Somewhere in the two years there was an idea, never spoken, that a person who finishes this would be a different sort of person. Somebody more ordered. Somebody who does things. Somebody the house says something different about.

That idea is not silly and it is not vanity. It is the most ordinary human thing there is and almost everybody who starts a project is carrying some version of it.

And the room came in on time and the person did not change, and now there is a finished room and a disappointment that cannot be explained to anybody, because explaining it means admitting what was being expected.

You are a woman who finished a room and is still herself, and a project has never once been able to carry what you were asking it to carry.

My expectation is from him

There is a line in the sixty second psalm about where a person puts their expecting, and it is unusually specific about the direction.

My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. (Psalm 62:5, King James Version)

My expectation is from him.

Not my expectation is that he will do a particular thing. From him. The expecting has a source rather than a content, and the source is a person rather than an outcome.

That is a strange sentence and it repays reading twice. It is about where the expectation comes from and where it points, and it is not describing a list of things somebody is hoping will happen.

You have an expectation with a direction rather than a contents, and a thing hoped for from a room has never once been the same as one that has a source. Psalm 62:5 says from him rather than naming any outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a redirection rather than a correction.

And the first half is the instruction that makes it possible. My soul, wait thou only upon God.

He is talking to himself. And the word only is doing real work, because it implies there were other places the waiting had been going, and they are not listed and they are not scolded. They are simply displaced by the word only.

You were never being told the other expecting was foolish, and a word that displaces something has never once been a word that condemned it. The Spirit of God is the one the waiting is redirected toward, and the written word uses only rather than listing anything to be ashamed of.

The room did what a room can do

So here is the practical claim, and it is about categories.

A finished room can do a number of real things. It can be used. It can be pleasant to walk into. It can stop costing something every day. It can hold what it was built to hold.

Those are the things in a room capacity, and every one of them actually happened, and none of them is small.

What a room cannot do is alter the person who lives in it. That was never in its capacity, and it was never going to be, and the failure is not the room failing and it is not you failing.

You have a room that did everything a room can do, and a finished project has never once been capable of the thing you were quietly asking it for. Psalm 62:5 puts the expectation on a person rather than on an outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a load off a room without taking anything from the woman who built it.

And here is the second thing, and it is the one that stings and then helps.

The disappointment is not evidence that the work was pointless. It is evidence that something was being asked of it that it was not built for, and that is a much better problem, because the asking can be moved and the work stays where it is.

You have been aiming a real expectation at a room, and a misdirected hope has never once made the wanting underneath it into a fault. The Spirit of God is the one who receives the expecting, and Psalm 62:5 moves it rather than telling anybody to stop having it.

And one more, and it is the whole of what this row exists to protect.

You have a room that is allowed to be gladly received without fixing anything, and a good thing has never once had to change somebody to have been worth doing. Psalm 62:5 waits only upon God and leaves everything else to be what it is, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in an ordinary finished room.

One true thing the room did

Here is the assignment and the stopping point is the entire design.

Say out loud one true thing the finished room did.

A plain fact about the room. The children can have friends in there now. I can shut the door on it. It stopped being the thing I walk past. Whatever is actually true.

You have one true fact about that room available tonight, and a plain statement about what a room does has never once been a small claim. Psalm 62:5 keeps the expecting pointed at a person rather than at an outcome, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while a plain sentence gets said.

And then stop before adding anything about yourself.

You have an instinct at the end of that sentence to append something, and every one of the additions has never once been about the room at all. And I still have not changed. And I do not know why it does not feel like more. And it took two years and I am the same. Psalm 62:5 keeps the expecting on a person, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes the stopping possible.

Every one of those is the load going back onto the room.

Say the true thing. Then close your mouth. Let the room have exactly the credit it is due and not one word more, and let the question about yourself be a separate question for a separate day.

And that is all. It takes about six seconds and it is the first time that room has been allowed to be simply what it is.