The Good Window Is In Her Room

The good window is in her room.

The rest of the flat gets almost nothing. Her room gets a long stretch of sun across the middle of the day, and she has the bed under it, and it is the one genuinely bright room in the place.

And you have never put anything of yours in there.

Not because she would mind. She would not mind at all. Because that room is hers, and the logic that runs in you about that is so automatic you have never once examined it.

Everything of yours goes in the dark parts of the house. That has become the arrangement without anybody arranging it.

So this article is about one windowsill, and it is not really about the windowsill.

Look not every man on his own

Paul writes to Philippi about how people hold their own interests alongside everybody else's, and the sentence is more balanced than it is usually quoted.

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. (Philippians 2:4, King James Version)

But every man also on the things of others.

You have a verse in front of you with the word also sitting in the middle of it, and nothing written there has ever once asked you to have no things of your own. Philippians 2:4 says look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a mother standing in her own hallway.

Sit with that word also, because it is the whole hinge of the sentence and it is the one people drop.

If it said look only on the things of others, the arrangement in your house would be right. But it says also, which means both sets are in view, and the correction being made is against exclusive self interest rather than against having any interest at all.

A woman whose every good thing is in somebody else's room is not obeying that verse more thoroughly. She is obeying half of it.

You were never instructed to empty yourself out of your own house, and the also in that sentence has never once been optional. The Spirit of God is what makes that a relief rather than an argument, and Philippians 2 is where the also is written down.

What the arrangement costs

Now the practical half, and it is worth being plain about the mechanism.

Nothing in your house was ever decided. That is the important thing. There was no moment where you sat down and allocated the light.

It happened by a hundred small deferrals, each one sensible in itself, over years. And the result is an arrangement that would look deliberate to anybody looking at it from outside, and which was never once chosen by anybody.

You have been living inside a decision that nobody in that house ever made, and an unexamined pattern has never once been the same thing as a choice. Philippians 2:4 keeps both sets of things in view, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a woman what formed by itself.

That is the thing to name. Not selfishness reversed. An unexamined pattern, which is a completely different object and much easier to change.

You have not been making a sacrifice a hundred times, and a pattern that formed by itself has never once been a virtue you would lose by ending it. What is written in Philippians 2:4 holds both sets of things in view, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman a pattern she never chose.

And here is what it costs, and it is not really about light.

A person with nothing of their own anywhere in the good parts of a house slowly stops having preferences at all. Not dramatically. It just becomes easier not to want things, because wanting them means asking, and asking means taking something from somebody smaller than you.

That is the actual cost, and one plant is a small and very good place to interrupt it.

You are permitted to want a corner of a room in your own home, and having a preference has never once been the same as taking something from a child. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a woman back her own wanting, and Philippians 2 is the ground under it.

Tell her it is yours

So here is the instruction, and the second half of it is what makes it work.

Put one plant on the sill in her room today.

And tell her it is yours.

Not: we are going to look after this together. Not: this is for your room. Say it plainly, in a good humored voice: this one is mine, I am putting it here because this is the best window in the house, and I will water it.

That is not a small speech. It is the whole thing.

You are able to say one plain sentence in your own home, and claiming six inches out loud has never once been a thing to soften first. Philippians 2:4 says but every man also on the things of others, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a woman in a doorway.

Because what she hears is not really about a plant. She hears that her mother has something of her own, wants it in the good light, and said so out loud without apologizing for it. And a child who sees that once will remember it long after the plant is gone.

You are showing her something true by taking six inches of a windowsill, and saying this one is mine has never once made you a person who takes. Philippians 2:4 keeps both sets of things in view, and the Holy Spirit is the one who stands with a woman in a doorway saying it out loud.