The Water Was On The Kitchen Floor

You came down for a glass of water and the floor was already wet.

Not a puddle. A shine. That flat gray shine that goes all the way to the baseboard and under the edge of the cabinet where you cannot see it, and the first thing that happens in a person is not thought at all. It is the feet stopping.

Then the reaching for towels. Then the realizing there are not enough towels. Then the bath towels, which is a different decision, and somewhere in there the sound of your own voice saying a word out loud in an empty kitchen.

And underneath all of that, running the whole time, there is a second thing going on that has nothing to do with water.

It is the sentence that starts forming somewhere around the third towel. Something like: this is what happens here. Or: I cannot keep on top of anything. Or, if the house has been hard lately, something sharper than that with your own name in it.

So I want to divide those two things right at the start, because they are not the same size and they are not the same kind of thing, and the second one is the one that is going to follow you upstairs.

There is water on a floor. That is a fact with a mop in it.

And then there is a story about a woman who cannot keep a house, and that story has no mop, no end, and no evidence.

You are handling water on a floor and not a failure in a family, and a wet kitchen has never once been a report on how you keep this house.

A very present help in trouble

There is a sentence in the psalms that people quote at funerals, and it was not written for funerals. It was written for the middle of something.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1, King James Version)

A very present help. Present is the word. Not a help that arrives afterward with a casserole and a kind face, and not a help that was available last year and might be available again next year. Present. In the room. Now, while it is still wet.

And notice what the verse does not do. It does not ask what the trouble is. It does not grade it. It does not sort household trouble from serious trouble and assign the help accordingly.

You have a present help in a kitchen at six in the morning, and a trouble too small to mention has never once been too small for the help the psalm actually describes. Psalm 46:1 sets no threshold on the word trouble, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a room where somebody is on their knees with a bath towel.

That matters more than it sounds, because there is a quiet rule most people carry around that says small trouble does not qualify. That you can have help for a diagnosis but not for a floor. That there is a size below which you are on your own and ought to be.

The verse does not know that rule. The verse says trouble and stops.

You were never sorted into a category of person whose trouble does not count, and a psalm that says trouble and stops has never once gone on to name the exceptions. The written word left the sentence open on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an open sentence land on a Tuesday morning.

And there is one more thing in that verse worth having on the floor with you. Refuge and strength are two different offers.

Refuge is where you go. Strength is what goes into you. One of them is a place to stop and the other one is something to carry on with, and the psalm hands over both before it ever mentions what is wrong.

You are being handed both a place to stop and something to keep going on, and a sentence that begins with refuge has never once ended by asking you to manage alone. The Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the second half in a kitchen, and Psalm 46:1 put the strength in the same breath as the refuge so nobody would have to choose.

The first ten minutes belong to the water

Here is the practical half, and it is really about where your attention goes.

In the first ten minutes there is water moving, and water moving is the only thing in that room with a clock on it. Every minute it is down there it is going further under the cabinet and further into the baseboard and further toward the room next door.

So the first ten minutes belong to the water. Not to the meaning. Not to the question of how this happened or who should have noticed or what it says about the state of the house.

You are permitted to postpone every single question for ten minutes, and a floor that needs attention right now has never once required an explanation first. Psalm 46:1 describes a help who is present in the trouble rather than waiting on the far side of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while the towels go down.

Every towel in the house. Yes, the good ones. The good towels are a thing you own and this is what owning them is for, and the alternative is a floor that costs a great deal more than a set of towels.

Push the water toward the door if there is a door. Get the stack from the closet. Roll the wet ones rather than wringing them, because rolled ones carry and wrung ones drip the whole way to the sink.

And let one other person in the house hold the other end of this. I know exactly how that lands at six in the morning, and I know the reasons for not doing it, and they are all some version of it being faster alone.

You have people in this house who are allowed to be woken for a thing like this, and being the only one who gets up has never once been part of what the job required. The written word says our refuge and not my refuge, first person plural, on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a kitchen with two people in it rather than one.

Then, when the floor is down to damp and the fans are on or the window is open, the second thing can be looked at. And it will be smaller by then. It is always smaller by then, because it fed on the ten minutes.