I moved this summer.
I'd been living in my previous place for three and a half years, which was the longest I've lived in a single place since the Bush presidency (H.W., not W.). It was such a relief to settle into one place, one room, one address, for that long. It fit my needs perfectly, and gave me a chance to feel grounded and settled in a place I could call my own, even while so many things were uprooted and unsettled around me.
I was perfectly happy with the space I had. Everything I owned filled the space, almost perfectly. Oh, sure, there was the odd time when I found myself longing for more room, a larger space to call my own. My own kitchen. My own bathroom. A bigger bedroom, more closet space, a sauna.
But as soon as I moved into the larger space available in the new flat, all that I owned expanded immediately to fill it, and I found myself quickly wondering, "How did I ever survive before?" How did I manage to share a kitchen with 2, 3, sometimes 4 or more others? How did I manage to fit an office into my bedroom? Where did I keep my winter sweaters when I wasn't wearing them?
You’ve probably experienced this yourself. You move into a new space, there’s an extra room or a larger floor-plan, and within a short time you find yourself thinking, “How did I ever survive before?” And if you’re not careful, you find yourself wondering not just how you were able to survive in a smaller space, but how anyone at all is able to survive without a guest room or walk in closet or high-speed internet connection or a sauna.
(Especially a sauna)
We fill the space available to us. That’s a normal, human thing to do. You could make the argument - I won’t, at least not here, but you could - that filling the space available to us is part of our divine commission. But beyond that, it's how we're wired. There's some healthy aspects to that, and, as always, some dangerous sides as well. But, almost without exception, we fill - and sometimes overfill - the space available to us.
I got married this summer.
I’d been single for thirty three and a half years, spanning Reagan to Obama. It was a relief to settle down, never to wonder again whether I would be married or single or with who or when or how or does she like me she replied to my text in less than a minute three times in a row. Marriage has given both of us a chance to feel grounded and settled with someone we loved, even while so many things have been uprooted and unsettled around us.
My life immediately expanded. Not in an “everything just got more amazing, plus hearts” way. (A bigger house isn’t necessarily a better house, just like marriage isn’t necessarily better than singleness). But there are definitely more rooms in this new phase of life. And we have easily and quickly filled the space available to us.
I don't want to forget that life existed before marriage. That for thirty three and a half years I was often happy, sometimes not. Often content, sometimes not. Wishing sometimes for new rooms to open their doors, but happy to fill the space I had. I'd like to think I filled it well in the time I lived in the rooms I had, but of course that wasn't always the case.
The question is not, "what new spaces can you fill?" Or, "what rooms, with closed doors as of now, do you wish could be opened?" Of course we can hope and dream, and sometimes even pray with all our hearts for God to see fit to expand our floor plan. But far better to focus our energies on filling well the rooms we have already been given.
We fill the space available to us. That's a given. Whether single or married, one- or two- or many-bedroom homes, sauna or no (still no), fulfilling career or mindless tedium, we should be far more concerned with how we are filling the rooms we've been given that planning for some future expansion. And if at some time we find ourselves with a sauna or spare room, a child or grandchild, a new marriage or a new job, we should fill that space fully, but never at the expense of forgetting that somehow, we survived just fine for all those years before. The joy of expansion should never completely obscure the remembrance of past joys in smaller spaces.
After all, new rooms don't create joy. We do when we fill them.