I Moved Back Into My Parents' House At Forty

You are sleeping in the room you slept in at fifteen.

There is a mark on the door frame where the height was measured. The window does the thing it always did. And there is something on a shelf in there that has been on that shelf since before you left the first time, and nobody has moved it in twenty five years.

You are forty and you are back, and it was not a plan.

I want to name the specific thing this does, because it is not the same as any other kind of move.

Every other move is forward, even a bad one. This one reads as a rewind. And because the room is unchanged, and because your mother makes the same sound coming down the stairs that she made when you were fifteen, something in you keeps getting quietly relocated to being fifteen, several times a day, without your permission.

That is the actual difficulty, and it is not about the house being unpleasant. It is probably a kind house. That is not the problem.

The problem is that a forty year old woman with a life behind her is living inside a set of rooms that have no evidence of that life in them anywhere.

So the assignment tonight is about evidence, and it is one object.

God setteth the solitary in families

There is a line in the sixty eighth psalm that is about exactly this arrangement, and it is not sentimental.

God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land. (Psalm 68:6, King James Version)

God setteth the solitary in families. Sets. Places. Puts somebody where they are.

You are somewhere God is described as putting people rather than somewhere a person ends up, and being set in a family has never once been the same thing as failing to stay out of one. Psalm 68:6 makes the placing an act of God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman in a room she slept in at fifteen.

Now look at the company that line keeps, because it is instructive.

The next clause is about bringing out those bound with chains. The setting of the solitary in families sits beside a rescue.

That is the register the verse is in. It is not talking about arrangements that went wrong. It is a list of things God does for people in trouble, and being placed in a household is one of them, listed alongside chains coming off.

You have been placed rather than defaulted to, and a household taking somebody in has never once appeared in Scripture as a failure. The Spirit of God is the one who sets the solitary in families, and it is written in Psalm 68:6 that this stands beside the breaking of chains.

Evidence of a life

Now the practical question, which is the whole of the second half.

The rooms have no evidence of your adult life in them.

That is not a complaint about your parents. It is arithmetic. You arrived with what would fit, and most of it went into storage or was let go, and what came into the house went into a bag and the bag went into a closet, because unpacking properly felt like a statement about how long this was going to be.

So the visible content of your life in that house is: the clothes in this week's rotation.

You are carrying twenty five years that this house has no record of, and a set of rooms has never once been an accurate inventory of anybody's life. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows the whole of what a woman is carrying, and Psalm 68:6 has God set the solitary into a household as an act of His own.

And meanwhile the visible content of your fifteen year old life is: the mark on the door frame, the shelf, the room, and about four hundred other small things.

The evidence in that house is running about four hundred to one against the woman you actually are.

You are able to change the evidence in a house, and a bag in a closet has never once been the only place an adult life could live. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what a room has been quietly arguing, and Psalm 68:6 has God setting people into households on purpose.

And here is the piece I want to be careful about, because it is the part everybody gets wrong.

This is not about asserting yourself. Nobody in that house is contesting anything. Your mother is not trying to make you fifteen and would be horrified to hear it put that way.

It is a physical fact about a room, and it has a physical answer, and no conversation with anybody is required at any point.

You are dealing with a room rather than with a person, and a house full of somebody's childhood has never once required a conversation to be corrected. The Spirit of God is the one who works through what is actually in a room, and it is written in Psalm 68:6 that God is the one who sets people into families.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on the marriage, not on the job, not on how the last twenty five years went. A woman back in her childhood home at forty is not a verdict on the woman, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while she is sitting on the end of that bed.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from an address, and where somebody is living at forty has never once been a statement about who she is. Psalm 68:6 puts the setting of the solitary in families among God's rescues in Psalm 68, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing from your own life

So here is the assignment.

Put one thing from your own adult life where you will see it every morning in that room, and let it be the first thing your eyes land on.

Not from before you left. From the twenty five years in between. Something from a house you ran, a job you did, a place you lived, a person you knew, a thing you made.

It is in the bag in the closet, or in the car, or in one box in a storage unit that can be reached on Saturday. Wherever it is, get one.

You are putting the last twenty five years into a room that has none of them in it, and one object from an adult life has never once been too small a piece of evidence. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman puts her own life back into view, and Psalm 68:6 has God set people into households deliberately.

Then the placement, and it matters.

Lie on that bed and find where your eyes go first in the morning. Everybody has a spot and it is the same one every day, and in that room it has probably been the same spot since about the age of nine.

Put the thing there.

Because the first four seconds of a morning is where the relocating happens. That is when the room does its work, before anything else in the day has started. And an object from your own adult life, sitting exactly where the eyes land, interrupts it every single morning without any effort from you at all.

You are interrupting a relocation that happens before the day starts, and one object in the right four inches has never once been beneath the notice of the God who is there when the eyes open. The Spirit of God is the one present in the first four seconds of a morning, and it is written in Psalm 68:6 that He is the one who sets the solitary in families.