A Room Made Ready

🕯️ This afternoon I sat with two pictures side by side on my screen. The first was an empty room: white walls, pale timber floors, one wide window letting in a soft, silver light.

Nothing on the walls, nothing on the floor, nothing to say who might belong there, and an instruction to ask AI a simple question: "Knowing everything you know about me, fill this room." The second was the same room, filled in response to that question, and what came back made me catch my breath.

A deep maroon wall with a golden feather and my name written across it. Heal. Encounter. Create. A round table circled by velvet chairs, waiting for strangers to become family. An easel holding a painted heart, colour spilling over its edges. A desk crowded with ideas, books stacked high with the Bible resting on top, warm lamps glowing in the corners. Tucked by the window, a cream armchair wrapped in a maroon throw, with a cushion that read Rest. Create. Heal. Repeat.

✍️ I didn't expect to be moved, yet I was. It wasn't the velvet or the gold that undid me. It was one quiet line at the end: "For a woman who spends so much of her life making room for others, I wanted this room to make room for you, too."

I sat with that for a long while. How often have I set the table for everyone else and forgotten to pull out a chair for myself?🤔 How many times have I opened the door wide for the broken-hearted, made sure everyone had a seat, and then quietly slipped away to tidy up once they had gone?🤔

🕊️ That line found me in a tender place. On Sunday, Elias drove me home after a four-day convention. He carried the boxes into my studio and, as he walked past my car, pointed at the magnet on the door. He read it out loud: Healing 💔heARTs💖. Changing the world 🌏 one broken 💔 heart at a time. "Start with yours," he said, as he walked back to his car.

The very next morning a message arrived from him: "Take this week off from PSANZ activities. Use the time to look after yourself and to heal after the weekend." He had already moved the meeting scheduled for that afternoon. I didn't have to ask, explain, or rearrange a thing. He knew about all the emails waiting in my mailbox and the backlog of tasks waiting for my attention, yet he had simply cleared the space, handed me the key and given me permission to rest. It wasn't until I had a nap, after spending some time at the office working on blog posts this morning, that I realised how deep the exhaustion lies.

Three invitations to rest in as many days. I don't believe that's a coincidence. My Father has a way of speaking through the kindness of others, especially when I'm too weary to hear Him any other way. It's as though He's been quietly clearing the calendar, moving the chairs aside, and whispering, Come, beloved. This room is for you. Even the word Elias chose, heal, is stitched right there on that cushion.

🪨 I've known empty rooms. Seasons when the walls felt bare and the floor stretched out in silence, when I couldn't yet see what would fill the space. This year has carried some of that: a holding pattern, a waiting, a stillness I didn't always understand. Looking at that first picture this afternoon, Holy Spirit whispered something I needed to hear. An empty room isn't a forgotten room. Before a single chair was placed, the room had already been seen.

That is the heart of my Father. He sees the finished room while I'm still standing in the bare one. He knows where the light will fall, where the table will stand, where the healing will happen. The Potter never looks at the clay and sees only clay; He sees the vessel. Even when the vessel cracks, He doesn't throw it away. Like kintsugi, He fills the broken places with gold until the fractures become the most beautiful part of the story.

🕊️ Here is what moved me most deeply. A programme could only arrange what it had been told. My Father knows what I've never said aloud. He knows the corners I keep tidy for visitors and the cupboards I keep closed. He knows the chair I rarely sit in. He doesn't need a description of me to furnish my life; He formed me, and He has been preparing a place for me since before I knew His name.

📖 "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." — John 14:2 (NKJV)

✍️ If I could add one thing to that beautiful room, it would be a kintsugi bowl at the centre of the round table, gold running through every crack, so that each person who sits there knows broken things are welcome here. Broken hearts too. Mine included. Start with yours.

I'd also leave the golden feather exactly where it is. It reminds me of His wings, the shelter I run to when the world feels too loud, the soft covering where I learn again that I'm safe. Feathers are light, yet together they carry a bird across oceans. His presence is like that: gentle enough to rest on my shoulder, strong enough to carry me home.

🌱 Perhaps this season isn't emptiness after all. Perhaps it's preparation. Light is pouring through the window like water across the floorboards, reaching places I thought were too far into the shadows. The girl whose name means bringer of joy is learning that joy isn't only something she brings to others; it's something she's allowed to receive.

🕯️ So this afternoon, in the week I've been given, I'm making a small, holy decision. I'm going to sit in the chair. Not the desk chair, not the one at the head of the table, but the soft one by the window. I'm going to pull the throw around my shoulders, let the to-do list wait, and simply be with Him. Rest. Create. Heal. Repeat. It turns out that cushion was preaching to me all along.