I Do Not Open That Drawer

It is the second one down.

You know exactly which one. You walk past it eleven times a day and your hand has never once gone to it, and there is a small adjustment your whole body makes in that part of the kitchen that you stopped noticing years ago.

There are other things in there. Ordinary things. A peeler you would quite like to have. Some other bits. And all of them live behind the one object, which means all of them are gone too.

That is what happens. A fear starts at one thing and then quietly annexes everything within reach of it, and nobody sends a notice.

You have not opened it in years. Not once. And there has never been a dramatic moment about it, which is somehow the thing that makes it hard to explain: nothing happened, and then nothing kept happening, for a very long time.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything practical.

This is a real fear and nothing here is going to treat it as absurd.

A drawer that has stayed shut for years did not stay shut by accident, and whatever is behind it has been genuinely frightening to you. Nobody here is going to laugh at that or find it strange, and nothing in this article requires you to explain how it started, because most of these never have a clean beginning.

He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears

There is a line in the Psalms about being answered, and the word all in it is doing something particular.

I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. (Psalm 34:4, King James Version)

Delivered me from all my fears.

Not from the thing he was afraid of. From the fears themselves, which is a different object entirely, and the distinction is the whole of this. The circumstance may or may not have changed. The man says the fears went.

And all is a wide word. Not the reasonable ones. Not the ones with a clear origin he could account for. All of them, including whatever had accumulated around the first one without being noticed.

You are in range of a word as wide as all, and a fear that quietly annexed a whole drawer has never once been outside what that word covers. Psalm 34:4 says all my fears rather than naming a circumstance, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who adjusts her path eleven times a day.

And read what he did first, because it is one verb.

I sought the LORD. That is the whole of his contribution. There is no account of him working on himself, no preparation, no gradual building up, and no evidence offered about his readiness.

He sought, and he was heard, and the delivering is credited entirely to somebody else.

You have one thing to do rather than a program to complete, and being ready has never once been listed anywhere as the condition on being heard. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has been waiting to feel able first, and Psalm 34:4 puts the seeking on one side and all the delivering on the other.

The drawer got bigger than the knife

Here is the practical half, and it is one correction. What is shut tonight is not a knife. It is a drawer, and the difference matters more than it sounds.

Somewhere in there is the thing this started with. And around it now are the peeler, the other bits, a whole section of that kitchen, and a route your body takes that it never decided on. None of those were ever frightening. They were simply near.

That is the mechanism, and it runs quietly: a fear takes territory it was never given, because avoiding something means avoiding everything beside it, and nobody audits the boundary.

You were never afraid of the peeler, and a fear that took ground around itself has never once been entitled to the ground. Psalm 34:4 says all my fears rather than the one he named, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman whose kitchen has a closed section in it.

And here is the second half, which is the instruction, and it splits tonight into two separate things rather than one. Opening the drawer is not the same act as using the knife. They have been one act for years, which is exactly why neither has happened.

So tonight has a first half that costs almost nothing: open it, look in it, and leave it open. That is a complete action and it is allowed to be the whole of the evening if that is where it stops.

You have permission to stop after the first half, and a drawer opened and left open has never once been a smaller victory than anything else. The Spirit of God is the one in that kitchen with a drawer standing open, and Psalm 34:4 credits the delivering to God rather than to the size of what somebody managed.

What tonight is, with that drawer

So here is the assignment, and it comes in two parts. Open that drawer tonight, cut one thing slowly, and put the knife away.

Tonight. Open it first, and leave it open, and stand there for a moment. Take out the peeler and the other things while the drawer is open, because they never belonged behind it. Then, if the evening allows, take the knife out and cut one thing. One cut is enough. Board flat, other hand well back, and slow enough that your attention stays on your fingers.

It may be uncomfortable. That is expected, and discomfort is not danger, and every bit of it is allowed to be there while your hands do the thing anyway.

You are taking the ground back rather than defeating anything, and a drawer opened after years has never once needed a second act to have counted. Psalm 34:4 puts the whole of the delivering on God's side, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that drawer with a woman standing in front of it.

Then the last part, and it is the one that does the work. Put the knife away yourself and leave the drawer closed the ordinary way, without ceremony. No standing there afterward, no marking it, no telling yourself something about what this means. It was a drawer. It is a drawer. The whole point of tonight is to make it ordinary again, and ceremony is the thing that would keep it special.

You are making it ordinary rather than significant, and a drawer that goes back to being furniture has never once been a small result. The Spirit of God is the one at that counter with somebody closing a drawer without thinking about it, and Psalm 34:4 has a man report the delivering plainly without any drama attached to it.