Moving the Furniture

I’m trying to work out when and why I stopped moving the furniture. 

I seem to remember moving furniture around a room was just a natural part of my growing up life.  Every year one room would be re-decorated and the furniture would be shifted accordingly.  Inevitably here were times when the furniture would end up in the same place it started.  The size of the furniture and the shape of the room didn’t always give many options for variety.

Moving furniture was also a part of my university life.  It just seemed natural every so often to have a shift around.  It wasn’t just me.  We all did it.  We might even have had room shifting parties where we all pile into one room and the room occupier would direct people to move the bed under the window and bookcase beside the door. 

When I had my own place I shifted the furniture regularly.  The people I shared the house with were not furniture shifters and couldn’t understand my need to move things.  It wasn’t a compulsive thing or weekly or monthly thing.  I would just wake up one morning and know it was a furniture shifting day.

There was something refreshing about seeing things in different places.  I liked the variety of what I could see when I was in bed – sometimes I would be facing the door, other times the window.  Sometimes I could see the wardrobe, other times I couldn’t.  I liked it that way.

Did I stop because the furniture just got too heavy to shift?  Or was it me getting less fit as the years progressed?  I think part of it was marrying a non-mover-of-furniture.  My husband once wrote a motivational message on his whiteboard at work that said, “No one moves…No one gets hurt,”  he could quite happily have corned beef sandwiches every lunchtime and not feel the need for variety. 

I am a furniture mover at heart. 

I was talking to a young friend earlier in the week.  I suspect she is not a furniture mover.  She doesn’t like change.  It’s the change inflicted upon her that she doesn’t like.  She has reached that age in life where change is inflicted upon her in the form of hormones.  It seems like a stranger has hijacked her life and started to move the furniture around.  Nothing is in its proper place any more.

Change is being inflicted upon me also.  Being issued with hearing aids involved changes and my brain having to adapt to sounds it hadn’t heard for a long time.  Every so often as my vision changes I have to change my glasses.  I begrudge the expense and wish I had twenty-twenty vision.

My working hours are going to change in the not too distant future.   The changes in my view are not for the better, but the bull-headed managers are not listening to my concerns.

It all got a bit much for me yesterday.  Life felt like a pinball machine.  I was not the hand in control of the buttons and levers, but definitely the ball knocked from one side to the other.  Lights were flashing, buzzers buzzing , bells ringing and it’s was all too frantic.  It was just one change too many as far as I was concerned.

I sat on the sofa at the end of the day feeling quite trampled on and bruised.  It wasn’t a bible that I opened but a book of devotions. 

“Lord… are you not the God who is in heaven? You rule over all the kingdoms of the nations.  Power and might are in your hand, and no one can withstand you…for we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”  2 Chronicles 20:6, 12

Sometimes I have a tendency to forget that there is a ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations.  Sometimes I think that it is all down to me to sort it all out and find a way though.

Someone else seems to be moving my furniture about – not in my house, but in my life.  I don’t particularly like where they are putting things, but I they don’t listen to me.  It seems like I am powerless to do anything about it. 

What a comfort it is to know that I am not powerless at all!  I have on my side the ruler over all of the kingdoms of the nations.  I don’t feel quite so pushed about.  The furniture may not be moved to where I want it to be…but that’s OK.  My eyes are on God and I am safe.  The challenges ahead are not insurmountable when I have God’s resources at hand to deal with them.

Now let’s think about shifting the bed…