The Mirror I Turned To The Wall

In my grandmother's house in the old country there was a mirror in the hallway that nobody was allowed to move.

Not for any spiritual reason. It had been her mother's, and it was heavy, and the wall behind it had never been painted. Moving it would have shown fifty years of a different color, and so it stayed, and everybody in the family understood that some things stay where they are because of what is behind them.

I think about that when a woman tells me she has taken one down.

And they do tell me, eventually, and usually sideways. The full length one went into the spare room. The one in the hall got a coat hung over the corner of it and then the whole coat rack moved in front of it. The one over the dresser is turned to face the wall, and it has been like that since March, and nobody in the house has asked about it because nobody in the house has noticed.

I want to say the first thing plainly. That was not a strange thing to do.

It was a reasonable response to a real problem. A woman who finds that a particular object in her house is costing her something every day, and who moves the object, has done exactly what anybody would do with a chair that bruises your shin every time you pass it.

So I am not here to tell you to put it back tomorrow and stand in front of it. That would be a correction, and this site does not do those.

But I do want to look at what came next, because something did.

What moving it did and did not do

Start with what it did, because it did something and that deserves respect.

It removed a repeated event, and removing it was a form of care. Twenty times a day became four times a day, and four is a great deal less than twenty, and you slept better for a while. That is real and I am not going to talk you out of it.

Now what it did not do.

The thought did not go with it. That is the whole of the matter. The mirror went into the spare room and the sentence stayed exactly where it was, and if anything it got quieter and closer, because there is nothing left to blame it on.

You are carrying the same sentence you carried in March, and moving an object has never once been able to move the thing that was actually speaking. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman where the voice is actually coming from, and Genesis 3 records the first person who ever tried to solve a feeling by changing his position in a garden.

And here is what the move quietly cost, which I say gently.

The house got smaller, and a smaller house is harder to give care in. One room became a room you go into differently. A doorway became a decision. And a woman who was already carrying something now has a piece of choreography in her own home to go with it, and choreography is heavy.

You are running a small set of movements in your own house that nobody else can see, and that arrangement has never once been able to give you back the room. Scripture in Genesis 3 shows a hiding that solved nothing and cost a garden, and the Spirit of God is the one who walks a woman back into her own hallway.

I was afraid, and I hid myself

The oldest hiding in the book is worth sitting with here, because of how God handles it.

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. (Genesis 3:10, King James Version)

Look at the order of that sentence, because it is precise and most people read it backward.

He was afraid first. Then he hid. The hiding was second, and it was a response, and the fear was there before he moved an inch. He did not hide and then become afraid. He was already afraid and hiding was what he did with it.

You are hiding because of a fear that arrived first, and a covered mirror has never once been the thing that put it there. Genesis 3 says he was afraid and hid himself, in that order, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman which of the two came first.

Which means the hiding was never the problem. It was the symptom, and God treats it as one.

And notice what God does not do. He does not say come out of those trees immediately. He asks where are you, which is a question, and then He asks who told thee, which is a better question, because that is the one that goes at the actual source.

You are being asked a question rather than ordered out of the trees, and God has never once dealt with a hiding by demanding that somebody stop. It is written in Genesis 3 that the fear came before the hiding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who goes to the sentence rather than to the furniture.

Who told thee.

That is the line I would give you out of this whole passage. Not where is the mirror. Who told thee.

Because something said a thing about you at some point, or a great many somethings did over a long stretch of years, and the mirror in the spare room is not the author of any of it. It only ever repeated what it was handed.

You are living with a sentence somebody else wrote, and the object you moved has never once been the one who said it. The Spirit of God is what takes a woman back past the furniture to the voice, and the written word asks who told thee rather than why did you hide.

Putting one back, without looking at it

So here is what I would ask, and it is deliberately a strange request.

Put one small mirror back in a room this week, and do not look into it for three days.

That is the whole assignment. Put it back and leave it alone.

I mean that exactly. Not a small mirror you are going to work up to. Not a mirror with a plan attached. Put a small one back on a shelf, facing out, and then go about your week without using it once.

You are able to put an object back without owing it anything, and a mirror on a shelf has never once been able to require a single thing of you. Genesis 3 records a hiding met with a question rather than a demand, and the Holy Spirit is what makes putting something back into care rather than a test.

There are two reasons, and both of them matter.

The first is that the choreography goes. The doorway stops being a decision. The house gets its room back, and it gets it back without asking you to do the hard thing, because the hard thing is not the point this week.

The second is that it separates two things that got welded together in March. Having a mirror in a room and standing in front of a mirror are not the same act, and they have been treated as one act for a long time now.

You are able to have an object in a room without having a relationship with it, and those two have never once been the same thing. The written word in Genesis 3 shows God asking a question rather than issuing an instruction, and the Holy Spirit is what makes putting something back an act of care rather than a test.