Dwelling

I think it was in the tiny apartment on the troubled block when I first began thinking about the idea of dwelling. The neighborhood had a higher crime rate than any I’d ever lived in and, I confess, I cried on move-in day. We hauled our boxes up the stairs, no elevator, past the wild-eyed woman who sat on them all day, past the guy who dealt the drugs another floor up. I wasn’t calmed by the sound of gunshots in the street at night, nor by the loud fights in our stairwell.

And what I began to think about was how out-of-control circumstances can feel suffocating, except when we live with an in-control God. We can live somewhere or through something, while we simultaneously dwell in the shelter of the Most High, as Psalm 91 says. It says the person who dwells in the true shelter finds rest in that refuge.

Despite the rats and roaches, we painted the walls, hung homemade curtains, and our 400 sq ft began to feel like home (and a penthouse compared to our previous 250 sq ft). We had our reasons for choosing this block, and in time we found there were even more. Hard things that changed us, I hope. It was also a training ground for some strengthening we’d need a few years down the road in a different neighborhood.

Circumstantial changes can be really good in hard seasons, but they’re not always possible or occasionally not even right. But the peace of God transcends circumstance. It must, and it does because He says He’s near to those who seek Him and abide in Him.

Within a few years, we brought home our first baby, introducing him on the way up to the wild-eyed woman on the stairs, now a friend with a name. And a while after that, I cried when it was time to move out.