The Inspection Report That Found Everything Wrong With the House We'd Already Moved Into in Our Minds
The Inspection Report That Found Everything Wrong With the House We'd Already Moved Into in Our Minds
My wife and I had picked out where the couch would go. We had not signed a single paper yet, had not even had the house inspected, but we had already stood in that empty living room and decided, out loud, where the couch would go, where her mother's old dresser would sit in the back bedroom, which closet would finally become my own. The inspector spent four hours in that house two weeks ago and came back with a nineteen page report that started with the foundation and did not get better from there: a cracked slab, knob and tube wiring still live behind two walls, a roof with maybe three good years left in it. Our agent called that evening and told us the sellers would not come down anywhere close to what the repairs would cost, and just like that, the couch had nowhere to go.
I am fifteen years sober, and I used to believe disappointment was something my sobriety had mostly cured me of, since I no longer had a bottle waiting on the other side of bad news to blunt it. What this house taught me again is that sobriety changes what I reach for when the news is bad. It does not change how bad the news feels going down. I drove home the next day and sat in the driveway a long while before I went inside, not drinking, not even tempted to, just sitting with the ache of a thing I had let myself want out loud and then watched get taken back before it was ever truly mine to lose.
Scripture does not pretend that kind of ache is small or that a mature faith should have outgrown it. Solomon named the mechanism almost clinically, the way a doctor names a condition rather than scolding a patient for having it. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). Sick is the right word. I had not lost a house. I had lost a future I had already started furnishing in my head, and the grief that followed was real grief, not an overreaction to a listing. Jesus told His disciples, the night before the worst disappointment any of them would carry, that this ache was built into living in this world. "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV). He did not call tribulation a sign something had gone wrong with their faith. He said to expect it, and told them where the peace underneath it comes from, which was never the tribulation simply disappearing on schedule.
Here is where my own reasoning never once talked that ache down to size. I can tell myself accurately that we did not lose anything we legally owned, that a cracked slab and live knob and tube wiring were dangers we are fortunate to have caught, that there will be other houses. Every sentence is true, and none of it kept me from sitting in that driveway a half hour longer than I needed to, because disappointment is not a facts problem waiting on a better argument. It is grief over a hope that did not arrive, and Paul does not treat that hope as foolish for having been let out in the first place. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). The hope he describes was never the kind that depends on the house closing. It survives the house falling through, because it was never resting on the house to begin with.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that fifteen years of accurate self-talk could never finish producing by itself. The prophet, writing from the middle of an actual ruined city, a disappointment with real weight compared to mine, did not find his hope in circumstances finally going his way. "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I hope in Him!'" (Lamentations 3:22-24, NKJV). New every morning is not a promise that yesterday's loss gets undone. It is a promise today does not have to be built out of yesterday's wreckage. Paul prays something specific that I have started praying for myself in that same driveway. "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13, NKJV). By the power of the Spirit, not by a closing date finally going my way. David's old description of God's attention toward the brokenhearted has not felt like poetry to me this week. It has felt like an accurate medical report. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3, NKJV).
We are looking at listings again, slower this time, without picking out where the couch goes before the inspector has even seen the attic. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which hope deferred is making your own heart sick right now, which future you had already started furnishing before it was taken back. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that house, or job, or outcome arriving on schedule, and He has promised a hope that does not disappoint because it was never built on circumstances in the first place. He will never leave you alone in that driveway, however long you need to sit there before you go back inside.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; John 16:33; Romans 5:3-5; Lamentations 3:22-24; Romans 15:13; Psalm 147:3.
My wife and I had picked out where the couch would go. We had not signed a single paper yet, had not even had the house inspected, but we had already stood in that empty living room and decided, out loud, where the couch would go, where her mother's old dresser would sit in the back bedroom, which closet would finally become my own. The inspector spent four hours in that house two weeks ago and came back with a nineteen page report that started with the foundation and did not get better from there: a cracked slab, knob and tube wiring still live behind two walls, a roof with maybe three good years left in it. Our agent called that evening and told us the sellers would not come down anywhere close to what the repairs would cost, and just like that, the couch had nowhere to go.
I am fifteen years sober, and I used to believe disappointment was something my sobriety had mostly cured me of, since I no longer had a bottle waiting on the other side of bad news to blunt it. What this house taught me again is that sobriety changes what I reach for when the news is bad. It does not change how bad the news feels going down. I drove home the next day and sat in the driveway a long while before I went inside, not drinking, not even tempted to, just sitting with the ache of a thing I had let myself want out loud and then watched get taken back before it was ever truly mine to lose.
Scripture does not pretend that kind of ache is small or that a mature faith should have outgrown it. Solomon named the mechanism almost clinically, the way a doctor names a condition rather than scolding a patient for having it. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). Sick is the right word. I had not lost a house. I had lost a future I had already started furnishing in my head, and the grief that followed was real grief, not an overreaction to a listing. Jesus told His disciples, the night before the worst disappointment any of them would carry, that this ache was built into living in this world. "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NKJV). He did not call tribulation a sign something had gone wrong with their faith. He said to expect it, and told them where the peace underneath it comes from, which was never the tribulation simply disappearing on schedule.
Here is where my own reasoning never once talked that ache down to size. I can tell myself accurately that we did not lose anything we legally owned, that a cracked slab and live knob and tube wiring were dangers we are fortunate to have caught, that there will be other houses. Every sentence is true, and none of it kept me from sitting in that driveway a half hour longer than I needed to, because disappointment is not a facts problem waiting on a better argument. It is grief over a hope that did not arrive, and Paul does not treat that hope as foolish for having been let out in the first place. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). The hope he describes was never the kind that depends on the house closing. It survives the house falling through, because it was never resting on the house to begin with.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that fifteen years of accurate self-talk could never finish producing by itself. The prophet, writing from the middle of an actual ruined city, a disappointment with real weight compared to mine, did not find his hope in circumstances finally going his way. "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I hope in Him!'" (Lamentations 3:22-24, NKJV). New every morning is not a promise that yesterday's loss gets undone. It is a promise today does not have to be built out of yesterday's wreckage. Paul prays something specific that I have started praying for myself in that same driveway. "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13, NKJV). By the power of the Spirit, not by a closing date finally going my way. David's old description of God's attention toward the brokenhearted has not felt like poetry to me this week. It has felt like an accurate medical report. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 147:3, NKJV).
We are looking at listings again, slower this time, without picking out where the couch goes before the inspector has even seen the attic. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which hope deferred is making your own heart sick right now, which future you had already started furnishing before it was taken back. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that house, or job, or outcome arriving on schedule, and He has promised a hope that does not disappoint because it was never built on circumstances in the first place. He will never leave you alone in that driveway, however long you need to sit there before you go back inside.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; John 16:33; Romans 5:3-5; Lamentations 3:22-24; Romans 15:13; Psalm 147:3.
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