He Pours One at Seven

It is the ice she hears first. Two cubes out of the tray in the door, and then the glass, and then the cupboard by the fridge, and the whole thing takes about eleven seconds and she can time it without turning round.

Gwen is forty eight. Huw is fifty and he has done this at seven o'clock for the entire twenty three years she has known him, and he does it once, and there is never a second one, and he has never in twenty three years been anything but exactly himself.

She stopped two years ago. She did not make it a household matter. She told him, and he was good about it, and he asked what he could do, and she said honestly nothing, and she meant it and she still does.

So at seven, while she is at the stove with her back to the room, there are eleven seconds.

It is not craving. It is more like a bell. Something in her turns toward it every single evening the way a dog's ear moves, and it takes about four seconds to settle, and then she carries on with the potatoes.

Four seconds, once a day, seven hundred and thirty times a year. It is nothing. And she has never mentioned it to a living soul, because how would you begin, and because it would make Huw feel like a problem, and he is not a problem, he is her husband and he is a good man.

You know that sound. It might be a fridge door, a cap coming off, a cork, a kettle in somebody else's routine. It happens at a fixed time in a room you cannot leave, and it is over almost immediately, and it happens every single day.

You are able to live in God as a dwelling rather than merely visit Him, and you were never given a room to escape to instead. The psalm says because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation, and habitation is where a person lives; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that possible for a woman standing at a stove at seven o'clock.

Thou hast made the Lord thy habitation

Let me name it precisely, because the smallness is the whole difficulty.

Four seconds is nothing. That is exactly why you have never said it. Anything that takes four seconds cannot be raised without the raising being longer and heavier than the thing itself, and so it stays where it is and accumulates quietly, once a day, for two years.

And nothing here is going to suggest you ask Huw to change anything. He asked what he could do and you said nothing, and you meant it, and I am not going to reopen a decision you made on purpose and have held for two years. If you ever want to say something, that is yours to choose with him.

Here is the verse, and I want the word habitation.

Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation.Psalm 91:9

The psalm has already used the word refuge, and refuge is a place you run to. It is a shelter, somewhere you go when there is a reason. It is entirely honorable and it is what most people mean by praying about something.

Habitation is different. A habitation is where you live. You do not run to your habitation when something happens; you are already in it, and you were in it before anything happened, and you will be in it afterward.

You are able to live somewhere rather than run to it, and you were never limited to going somewhere when the moment arrives. That is what stands written in Psalm 91, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the difference between refuge and habitation real for a woman with her back to a room.

And look at the verb: thou hast made. It is something the person does. Not something arranged for them by circumstance, not something that happens once the kitchen is different. The psalm describes a person making a dwelling out of God, deliberately, which is a thing you do over time and by choice, and it is entirely available to somebody who cannot change one single object in a room.

You are the one who makes the dwelling, and you were never dependent on the house cooperating. Scripture puts that verb in the hands of the person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real possibility at four seconds past seven.

And here is the part that matters for a woman at a stove. If God is your habitation, then you are not out in the room during those eleven seconds waiting to get back to safety. You are already inside. The sound happens outside the place you live. It is weather, and you hear weather from indoors.

You are hearing it from inside rather than standing out in it, and you were never exposed in your own kitchen. The written word makes the dwelling a location you are already in, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that an experience rather than a doctrine at supper time.

And the plain thing, which this site says in every article and means completely. Two years of four seconds a day that you have never told anybody is worth telling somebody. A friend, a counselor, your doctor, a room where people say true things out loud on a weeknight. That is God's kindness with a face on it, and it costs Huw nothing at all.