The Room

Carelessly, I tossed the piece of trash on the ground as I trudged through the piles of garbage. A knot filled my gut. What had I gotten myself into? Surely…surely, he wasn’t going to come…here. After all, what was the point of trying to clean up a pigsty like this anyways?
I had to think.

Slowly I made my way to the couch in the center of the room—that is, if you could call it a couch. The thing was older than time, covered in a pattern long outdated with the springs poking through the ripped and faded fabric. It was both an aesthetic disaster and highly uncomfortable, but it didn’t matter. No one was here but me…and I was used to it.

I tried to ignore the reeking and rotting mounds of junk that always cluttered my headspace when I needed it. Boxes filled with random trinkets, meals that never got finished, trophies from preschool, detention slips, yesterday’s homework etc.

I hated this room. It was my vice, my guilty pleasure, and the bane of my existence. Sounds melodramatic, I know. But I adore order. And this room was anything but orderly. In attempt to provide order, I’d hung a curtain over half of the room. Various sheets covered various piles, each one labeled so I knew what was underneath. There. My futile attempts at order. Yes, this was my junk room. As much as I despised it, I always came back. Call it neurosis. Or habit. But in all honesty, it’s because it was mine. It’s the only place I’ve ever been able to truly call my own. Nobody came here but me. Nobody would. At least, that was the plan.

Thus, my predicament. Me and my big mouth. As I sat in the middle of my disastrous—yet familiar—room, I thought about the conversation I’d with a very dear friend. He’d asked about this room of mine. I guess I’d mentioned it before—often flippantly, ask f it wasn’t a big deal. But there were a few times I’d mentioned it not so flippantly. And he’d noticed. He tends to notice stuff lie that. So, he brought it up and asked if he could come and see.

“Oh no.” I’d protested, “You wouldn’t possibly want to go in there.””I think I would,” He’d responded.”But it’s a mess! I mean…believe me when I say, it’s a disaster.“”Oh, I believe you. I still want to come.” Then–teasing, “you’ll still be my favorite even if you are a slob.” He’s been calling me that to me for as long as I can remember. He says it whenever he’s talking about someone he really likes…and he makes a point to always say it to me.

It’s one thing to tell someone you’re messy, but it’s another to let them see.
I tried to convince him to give up on the idea, however, he’s more stubborn than I am. And when he gets an idea in his head, it’s really hard to get it out. And somehow–after a momentary lapse of reason–I’d agreed. I’d agreed to let him in. Feeling sick to my stomach, I got up, paced, and attempted to make clean. Oh what’s the point? This place wasn’t just dirty, it needed repair. Broken rafters, sagging walls, the leak in the roof, and two boarded up windows. Do I know how to pick the projects or what?
And then, the sound that I had been dreading.

Knock. Knock.

Maybe if I waited, he would change his mind. Maybe he’d think I wasn’t here. Maybe…Knock. Knock.

I bit down the expletive that threatened my lips. Reluctantly, I moved towards the door. “What am I doing?” I think to myself, “Surely this isn’t necessary. He’ll never want to be with me once he sees this. He’ll hate me. If I let him in, he’s just going to leave. He’ll…”

Knock. Knock.

Gulp.I opened the door.

And there…there he stood. And smiling. Oh that smile. Now I remembered, that smile was the whole reason I’d agreed to let him come. When I see that smile, I go senseless. In one hand he held a large black sack. With the other, he reached out and grabbed my hand, as if to assure me that everything was going to be okay. Then, he entered. He looked at the catastrophe. I mean, really looked at it. He walked around, perusing the whole thing.

And then he did something that I really didn’t expect him to do. He began uncovering the piles. He pulled off the sheet “Busyness” to reveal a pile of loneliness and an old dresser whose drawers were overflowing with dreams I’d tried to forget. He pulled off “Haughtiness” to reveal box after box of insecurity. He stripped off the one labeled, “Happy-go-lucky.” Underneath were all sorts of sorrows and unhealed hurts, along with mounds of dirty gauze and band-aids that I’d used to cover up old wounds. Problem is, most of those wounds never fully healed…so the pile of band-aids just keeps growing.With each pile I grew increasingly uncomfortable.

And then he went to the side of the room that I was hoping he wouldn’t–the section that was curtained off.”No…please.” I thought, “Anything but that.” If he went in there, he would see the one thing that I would worked so long and hard to hide. I hated–nay despised–this part of the room with an intense passion. Nevertheless, I couldn’t get away from it. Going in there was like this neurotic compulsion for me (can you say “glutton for punishment,” anyone?).

The curtain that hung from the wall was actually pretty. In fact, it was a fabric I fell in love with when I was twelve and bought on an impulse. If I could’ve, I would have decorated the whole room in a color scheme around this curtain. And maybe actually hung the curtain on the window instead of awkwardly from the ceiling. A smooth calligraphic hand had written the word “Perfection” in the middle of the curtain.

He looked long and hard at the curtain before pulling it back to reveal just one old cardboard box. Bland and boring. No big deal, right? He opened it. I couldn’t watch. Now, he would see. Behind the mask of “perfection,” in an unassuming box were all of my failures. Every. Single. One. He would see every time I’d hurt someone. Every time I’d cursed someone under my breath. Every time I’d binged on ice cream until my stomach hurt then stared at pictures of fitness models to make myself feel worse. Every time I tried to puke in the bathroom. Every time I broke a promise. Every time I let myself down and others. Every time I’d sinned in my heart and with my hands.

Every one was in that box.

I know. I’d been through them over and over and over again.
And now, he’d seen them. He’d seen my room. He’d seen everything. There was no way he was going to stay, now that he knew how much work it was going to be.He beckoned for me to come next to him, to where he was now sitting. He pulled out a failure and showed it to me. I choked back tears…I remembered that one as if it was yesterday. In fact, the page on which it was written was tear-stained, crumpled, and covered in shame. I had tried to throw it away many times before, but never could. It always ended up back in my box. Every. Single. Time. Throwing it away was pointless. Forgetting, impossible.

He then opened the large black sack, that he had carried in with him. I had forgotten about it until now.”May I?” he asked.”Oh you don’t understand. I’ve tried…it never works.” He just grinned, crumpled the page, and tossed it in there. He didn’t get it, did he? I opened my box, to show him that it would still be there. But when I looked for it, I discovered it had disappeared.

Stunned, I then opened his sack, to pull it back out. It wasn’t there either.”What…what’s going on? How did you do that?””Do you remember that conversation, when I asked if you’d trust me?”I nodded.”Well, then, trust me.”I bit my lip until it bled when he pulled out another. This memory was more painful, the failure more apparent. We read over it. Once again, he crumpled it up and tossed into his sack. Once again, it simply disappeared. Memory after memory, failure after failure went into that sack, and disappeared into the abyss. With each one, I could feel myself getting lighter and freer. As we went through them, I noticed, that some of the other piles of things began growing smaller, too. My insecurity pile was no longer as towering, my unhealed hurts no longer as overwhelming.

Before I knew it, we had been through the whole box. I was unsure how to feel…I felt both exhausted and energized; terrified and terrific; free and frightened. In some ways, I felt frightened by my freedom. I had grown so used to the contents of that box, that now that they were gone, I didn’t know what to do or how to feel.He then turned to me and looked into my eyes–in the serious, probing way that only he can. “It’s done,” he said, “they’re gone. You won’t be able to find them again. So, don’t try looking, because they won’t be there. Forget about them. It is finished.”

I nodded, unable to speak. I looked around at the room, which was still messy, but different. I could see that the sun was shining through the window, as it set on the horizon. Flowers were starting to spring up outside that I hadn’t noticed before.Then he spoke again, lightly this time, his face breaking into a huge grin. He leaned in close and whispered, “And guess what? You’re still my favorite.”

Isaiah 43:18Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?

Psalm 103:12As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.