The Landlord

Someone told me some counsel they'd received was to not make a habit of renting to single women. Why? Because they don't always call when something goes wrong. Many just let it fester until it's unfixable. I haven't stopped thinking about what he said. It wasn't an accusation, it was a commentary, but it's a commentary I find telling. It's a reflection of a heart-problem, not a laziness problem. I was called the The Responsible One yesterday. But I haven't felt responsible in a year or more. I'm backtracking and highlighting and caveating and trying to figure out where I misplaced responsibility.

This past week I've had to make some phone calls to leaders in my life. They've been humbling phone calls, not because I met with criticism or disdain, but because I've had to say over and over again: I do not know best for my life and I should have come to you before making decisions instead of after. I had been looking for their approval rather than their counsel—and that is not the mark of The Responsible One. That is a single woman who lets a problem fester because she doesn't believe people want to hear her pestering about broken faucets and broken feelings.

I woke up this morning thinking about responsibility and sonship. Responsibility is simply knowing what needs to be done and taking the proper steps to getting it done. But what about when you can't make yourself feel something? Even if it's true?

For four years God has been bringing the doubters and ye-of-little-faithers into my life. They believe they were created to be a vessel of wrath, that they're a jar too broken to be useful again, that God has not chosen them before the foundation of the earth, or that He has sprinkled fairy dust on the heads of others but never on them. No matter how long I listen or talk or hear or preach, I can't make someone feel something they don't feel. And I know how that feels.

No matter how much leaders in my life take my face in their hands and tell me they love me, they want to lead me, I disbelieve them. It's the same with God. I'm a hurried and harried kid, sweeping up the messes of other's lives and my own too, hoping he'll condescend to give me the scraps from the table. I feel undeserving and the truth is, I am.

But the Father is the landlord. He owns the house and the body, he owns my heart and my home. And it's his Son's job to be The Responsible One. And His Son already has been. My only job is to inhabit what he has given me to inhabit: my heart and his home. And to live there like He owns it and He loves to care for it. He loves to fix the leaky faucets and the broken unfeeling hearts. And he loves to employ the services of his people on earth to help care for me while I inhabit this tent. He gave those leaders to me to lead me. As I approach them with confidence, my heart grows in confidence of His care for me. He designed it like that.