The House Is Full And I Am Empty

There were fourteen people in that kitchen on Sunday and he counted them, which he has never done before.

He was not counting out of resentment. He wants that established because he can hear how it sounds. He counted the way you count something you are trying to make yourself feel, the way you look at a photograph of a place you have just been.

Fourteen. His mother-in-law. Both his brothers. His daughter and the man she is marrying. The two little ones on the floor. People he loves in a room he is glad about.

And he stood at the counter with a tea towel over his shoulder and felt absolutely nothing.

Not sadness. That is the thing. Not irritation, and not a wish for them to go. He would have been upset if they had gone early.

Just nothing. A kind of flat neutrality where the good feeling should have been, and it has been like that since roughly last winter, at every gathering, in a house he built his whole life around filling.

And here is what he cannot get past, and it is the reason this has stayed inside him for eight months.

He has nothing to complain about.

There is no illness. Nobody has left. Work is steady. His marriage is good and he means that plainly. The thing he wanted at twenty-five he now has, in a kitchen, fourteen of them at once.

So there is no sentence available to him. Every way of saying I am empty runs immediately into and what exactly is your problem, and he asks himself that question before anybody else can, and it closes the matter every time.

And that is you at your own counter, or you would not still be reading.

Two facts in one sentence, and no arithmetic between them

Let me put the verse down and then say the thing about it that matters most for a man in your position.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.Romans 8:11

An indwelling and a mortal body, side by side, with no arithmetic between them.

Paul does not weigh one against the other. He does not say that because the Spirit dwells in you the body should not be running down, and he does not say that because the body is mortal the dwelling is in question. He simply states both, as two facts about the same person, and moves on.

You are dwelt in and you are empty, and Scripture puts both in one line without asking you to reconcile them. It is written that His Spirit who dwells in you will give life to your mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), and mortal is the word chosen for the body He lives in. The Holy Spirit is in a man standing at a counter feeling nothing.

Now the arithmetic you have been doing, because it is the actual problem and it is not a small one.

You have a rule that says a man with a good life is not permitted to be empty. And so every time the emptiness arrives you weigh it against fourteen people in a kitchen, and the emptiness loses, and the matter closes, and nothing is dealt with and the emptiness is still there on Monday.

That rule is not from God. It is from a decent instinct about gratitude that has been extended past where it works.

You are not required to justify your condition against your circumstances. It is written that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18), and there is no clause in it requiring the circumstances to be bad first. The Holy Spirit does not run the calculation you have been running for eight months.

And I want to say the thing that I think you most need, because you have been alone with this since winter.

You are allowed to say it, and saying it is not a complaint about your family. It is written that we are to bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2), and a burden that nobody knows about cannot be borne by anybody. The Holy Spirit put fourteen people in that kitchen and at least one of them would want to know.

And say this plainly with me. If the flatness has gone further than flat, if there have been thoughts about not being here, tell your wife this week and tell your doctor. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. Anywhere else, your local crisis line and one human being who knows your name. A good house does not make that unnecessary, and eight months is long enough.