Half Of This Belonged To Somebody Gone

About half of what is in that house came from somebody who is gone.

The furniture in one room. The dishes. The thing on the shelf that nobody would look twice at and that you would go back into a burning house for. And a box, or two boxes, in a place you can name, that have been closed for about six years.

And you have had the whole range of advice about this.

Somebody told you to keep it all. Somebody else, gently, at some point, suggested it might be time. One person said something about closure, which is a word that means nothing and has never helped anybody.

None of them was any use, because all of them were about how much to keep, and how much to keep was never the question.

Here is the actual question, and nobody has asked it.

How much of what you kept is anywhere you can see it?

Because there is a difference between keeping something and living with it, and the difference is entirely about location. A thing in a box is kept. A thing on a shelf is lived with. And a house can be extremely full of somebody and have none of them out anywhere.

What mean ye by these stones

There is a moment in Joshua where twelve stones get set up and the reason given is unexpectedly specific.

That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? (Joshua 4:6, King James Version)

When your children ask. The stones exist in order to be asked about.

You are the keeper of things that Scripture says are set up to be asked about, and a stone in a box has never once been able to prompt a question. Joshua 4:6 puts the whole purpose of the memorial into somebody asking, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman with two closed boxes.

Now notice what those stones are and where they are put.

They are ordinary stones out of a riverbed. And they are set up in the open, where people walk, in the way of a household going about its life, because the entire design is that somebody will notice them and ask a question.

A memorial in a box has no mechanism. Nobody trips over a box. Nothing about a closed box has ever caused a child to ask anything.

You have things whose whole purpose was to be seen and asked about, and a box has never once been where a memorial was meant to stand. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a question gets asked and answered, and it is written in Joshua 4:6 that the stones were set up so that children would ask.

Keeping and living with

Now the distinction, and it is the whole of this article.

Keeping is about possession. Living with is about location.

You are somebody who kept everything that mattered, and a decision to keep has never once needed to be revisited by anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who honors what a woman held on to, and Joshua 4:6 sets stones up to be asked about rather than to be argued over.

A great deal has been kept. Nobody could say otherwise. There is more of her in that house than in anybody else's, and every decision to keep was the right decision and I am not going to revisit one of them.

But almost none of it is out. It is kept in the way a museum keeps things it is not displaying, which is properly and carefully and entirely out of sight.

And a person cannot live with something they cannot see.

You are able to live with what you have kept, and careful storage has never once been the same act as keeping somebody close. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates keeping from living with, and Joshua 4:6 sets the stones in the open where a household would walk past them.

And here is the piece that is worth the most, and it is about the rest of the house.

There are other people in that house, or people who come to it. And they are in the same position as you, only worse, because they have less permission.

Nobody else in that house is going to open those boxes. Nobody else is going to ask about her out of nowhere. They are all being careful, in every direction, and the carefulness has produced a house where somebody enormous is not mentioned.

One thing out on a shelf gives everybody in that house something to ask about. And the asking is the thing that has not happened in six years.

You are able to give a whole household a way in, and one object in the open has never once been a smaller invitation than a conversation somebody has to start from nothing. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a family talks about its own people, and it is written in Joshua 4:6 that the stones were set up in order that a question would come.

And this, plainly, in these words. Those boxes are not a report on you. Not on how you have grieved, not on whether six years is long, not on whether you have done it correctly. Two closed boxes are not a verdict on the woman who packed them, and I am not going to allow them to be read that way.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a box, and how a person's things have been kept has never once been a measure of how much she was loved. Joshua 4:6 puts the memorial in the open in Joshua 4, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing out, where you can see it

So here is the assignment, and the number is one on purpose.

Move one thing you kept out of storage tonight and put it where you can see it every day.

One. Not the box. Not a decision about the box. Open it, take out one thing, and close it again, and the box goes back exactly where it was.

Nothing is being decided tonight. Nothing is being sorted, offered, given away or thrown out, and if anybody has been waiting for that conversation they can go on waiting, because it is not tonight's business.

You are able to open something without settling it, and taking one thing out has never once been a decision about the rest. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a lid comes off after six years, and Joshua 4:6 has the stones set up in the open rather than stored.

Then put it where you can see it every day. Not on display in a room nobody uses. Where you actually are. The kitchen. The shelf by the door. The table beside the chair you sit in.

Because the point is not that it is honored. It is that it is there. On a Tuesday. In the ordinary run of a week, in the way she was there for the whole of the time before this.

The first few days will be sharp. Let them be. And by about the third week it will be ordinary, and ordinary is not a loss of respect, it is the thing you have actually been missing.

You are letting somebody be part of an ordinary week again, and a thing you can see has never once honored anybody less than a thing packed properly. The Spirit of God is the one present in a house where somebody is present rather than stored, and it is written in Joshua 4:6 that the stones stood where the children would see them and ask.