In My Mother's Kitchen

You knew where you would say it before you knew what you would say.

Not a church. Not a beach at sunset. Your mother's kitchen, which is now your kitchen, in the same house, with the same window over the sink and the same tile your father laid badly in nineteen eighty one.

That is where it needs to happen. You have known that for a while and you have never said it to anybody because it sounds sentimental and you are not a sentimental woman.

And then a second thought arrives on top of it, which is the reason you have not done it yet.

That a promise renewed in a kitchen is somehow a smaller promise than one renewed somewhere with significance attached. That the ordinary room reduces it.

Before anything else, and it stands at the top of every article in this row: if you cannot say it today, you are not failing at anything. Nothing here is asking anybody for anything they do not have.

For everybody else, let me put that second thought where it belongs.

A new thing in an old place

There is a line in Isaiah about God doing something new, and the location in it is what I want.

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:19, King James Version)

A way in the wilderness. Not a way to somewhere better. A way in the place they were already standing, which was the least promising ground available.

The new thing in that verse does not require a new location. It springs up in the old one. That is the specific claim and it is repeated in the second half about rivers in the desert.

You are able to have a new thing happen in an old room, and Isaiah has never once required a change of scenery for it. Isaiah 43:19 puts the new thing in the wilderness where the people already were, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true of a kitchen with a badly laid tile in it.

That is your kitchen, exactly. Old ground. Nothing about it arranged. And a new thing springing up in it, which is what the verse describes rather than an exception to it.

You have chosen the right room without knowing why, and the word has never once made the setting the measure of the moment. The passage grows the new thing out of the old place, and the Spirit of God is the one who was already in that kitchen before anybody said anything in it.

Why that room and not a beach

Let me say why your instinct was right, because I do not want you to think this article is merely permitting you.

A promise gets kept in ordinary rooms. Not on beaches at sunset. In kitchens, on landings, in cars outside schools, in the hour before anybody else is up.

So the ordinary room is not a compromise on the significant one. It is the room the promise actually lives in, and saying it there puts the saying and the keeping in the same place for the first time.

And there is the other thing, which is your mother. That kitchen has watched a marriage before yours. It knows how this is done. There is nothing sentimental about wanting to say a thing in a room that has held one already.

You are putting the saying where the keeping happens, and it has never once been a lesser location for either. Isaiah 43:19 makes the way in the wilderness rather than out of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who honors an instinct a woman has been embarrassed by.

You made a promise that has been kept in rooms exactly like that one, and the renewal of it has never once needed a more impressive setting than the keeping had. It is written that He makes a way in the wilderness, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the new thing in the place a person already stands.

One sentence, in that room

Here is the assignment and you already know where.

Say one sentence of it again, out loud, to God, with today's knowledge in it. In that kitchen, in the morning, before anybody else is up.

You are standing on ground the new thing grows out of, and Isaiah has never once required a change of location for one. Isaiah 43:19 makes the way in the wilderness itself rather than out of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present at a sink with the kettle not yet on.

Do not arrange it. Do not clean first. Do not wait for a date that means something.

Something like: I said it in nineteen ninety nine, and I have kept it in this room and rooms like it, and I say it again this morning.

Out loud, alone. Not to him, not as an event, and nobody needs to know it happened.

You are able to say it standing on the tile your father laid, and the room has never once made it count for less. Isaiah 43:19 springs the new thing up out of the old ground, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a kitchen at six with the kettle not yet on.