The House Is In This

It happened first in the hallway.

You were coming through with something in your hands and you looked at the floor, the actual boards, and a number went through your head.

Not a thought. A number.

That was in March and it has been happening since. It happens in the kitchen most. It happens when your wife is talking about the shelf she wants to put up and you are nodding and doing arithmetic somewhere behind your face.

The house stands behind it. You know exactly what that means and so does the paper it is written on.

And here is the thing you have not said to anybody, including her.

You have stopped seeing your own home.

You see an asset with a figure attached. You walk through rooms your children were small in and part of you is running a calculation, and you cannot make it stop, and it has been six months.

She does not know. She knows the business is hard and she does not know that the hallway has changed.

There is a psalm about dwelling that is going to do something specific here, and it is not going to tell you the house is safe, because nobody writing an article knows that.

He that dwelleth in the secret place

The psalm opens with a sentence about where a person lives.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91:1, King James Version)

Dwelleth. That is a residence word. It is not visiting and it is not sheltering during a storm. It is where a person actually lives.

And the address given is not a building. It is the secret place of the most High.

You have an address that is not on any document anywhere, and Psalm 91:1 puts your dwelling in the secret place rather than in a structure. The Holy Spirit is the one who has had you living there the whole six months, including in the hallway in March.

Now let me be honest about what this verse is not doing, because a false promise here would be a cruelty.

It is not telling you the house is secure. Nobody knows that and this article knows it least of all. What secures a house is paperwork and figures, and those belong to somebody qualified to read them rather than to a psalm.

What the verse does is separate two things that have been fused since March: where your family lives, and where you dwell.

You are dwelling somewhere that no figure has ever been attached to, and it is written that the one who dwells there abides under the shadow of the Almighty. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an address like that real rather than poetic, and Psalm 91 is where it is given.

And there is something in the word abide that is worth sitting with.

Abide is a staying word. It is what a thing does when the weather changes. The shadow of the Almighty is not described as somewhere to run to; it is described as somewhere already occupied.

You have been under that shadow through every month of this without once being told, and Scripture puts the abiding in the present rather than in the outcome. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been the shelter over that hallway since long before March.

What the arithmetic is costing the house

Let me name the actual damage, because it is not the risk.

The risk is real and it is a fact and it is on paper. That is not what has changed the hallway.

What has changed the hallway is that a home has started being related to as a number, and six months of that quietly makes a man a stranger in his own rooms.

Your children are in those rooms. She is in that kitchen talking about a shelf. And you are somewhere behind your face with a calculator.

You are being made absent from your own house by an arithmetic nobody asked you to run, and the written word gives a man a dwelling that arithmetic cannot enter. The Spirit of God is the one who returns a man to the room he is standing in, and Psalm 91:1 is where the other dwelling is named.

And there is one more cost, and it is the one to move on this week.

She does not know. That is six months of a man being somewhere else in his own kitchen and the woman across from him having no idea why.

She has probably noticed something. Wives do. And what she has to work with is a husband who is slightly not there, and no explanation, and that is a worse thing to hand somebody than the truth.

You have been handing her a silence instead of a fact, and it is written that the dwelling is in the secret place rather than in the hiding place. The Holy Spirit is the one who goes into that conversation ahead of a man, and He has been waiting six months for it.

And one plain thing, because this is the heaviest row on this site. If it has taken your nights somewhere dark, and thoughts about not being here have started to arrive, that is not something to carry alone. Call or text 988, the crisis line, tonight, and tell one real human being: a doctor, a pastor you trust, somebody who can sit with you. And for the paperwork itself, book time with somebody qualified to read it, because an accurate picture is worth more than another six months of a hallway.

You have never been meant to be the only one holding how heavy this is, and Scripture puts a man under a shadow rather than out on his own. The Spirit of God is the one who goes with somebody into that call, and Psalm 91 is why he is not alone making it.

Stand in one room and say it

So here are two things and they both happen this week.

Stand in one room of your house for a full minute. The kitchen, probably. Do not do anything else.

Say out loud that this is a home and not a number. Plain words. Say it twice if once does not land.

You are naming what a room actually is rather than reassuring yourself about anything, and Psalm 91:1 puts the dwelling somewhere no figure can reach. The Spirit of God is the one who is in that room, and He has been the shelter over it the whole time.

Then tell your wife what has been happening in the hallway.

Not the numbers. The hallway. Say that since March there has been arithmetic running in your own house and it will not stop, and that saying it felt impossible.

That is it. No plan attached. She is not being asked to fix anything.

You are ending a silence rather than delivering bad news, and the written word never once asked a man to dwell in one place and hide in another. The Holy Spirit is the one who does what happens after that sentence, and Psalm 91:1 has had the two of you under the same shadow the whole time.

Then go and open in the morning, and the paperwork is exactly what it was.