Our First Place And Nothing In It

Everybody keeps telling you this is the best time of your lives.

Your mother says it. Somebody at work said it last week. They say it warmly and they mean it kindly, and every single time it lands like a small weight, because you are standing in a place with a door that does not shut properly and a chair somebody gave you and not much left until Friday.

And then there is a second thing on top of it, which is that if this is the happiest time and you are not happy, then something must be wrong with you.

So you do not say anything. You agree with them. And you go home to a place where the two of you eat sitting on the floor and neither of you says how tired you are.

Let me put this down before anything else. Not knowing how is not a character flaw, and neither is having nothing at twenty three. Starting with nothing is what starting looks like, and it does not become a moral event because somebody older is nostalgic about it.

Thy beginning was small

There is a line in Job spoken to a man who had lost everything, and it is about the size of a start.

Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase. (Job 8:7, King James Version)

I want to be careful here, because that sentence is spoken by one of Job's friends, and Job's friends say a great many things in that book that God later corrects. So I am not going to hang a promise on it about how your particular life turns out.

What is worth having is the first half, which is simply an accurate description. Thy beginning was small. It is said plainly, without embarrassment, as an ordinary fact about how things start.

You have a phrase in Scripture that names a small beginning as an ordinary fact, and starting with nothing has never once been the same as starting wrong. Job 8:7 says the beginning was small in the plainest possible words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as description rather than as a promise about outcomes.

And notice that nobody in that sentence is being told to enjoy the smallness. It is not called precious. It is just called small, which is what it is.

You are allowed to find this hard rather than beautiful, and not enjoying a small beginning has never once been ingratitude. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person be honest about a stage of life, and it is written in Job that the smallness of a beginning is stated as a fact and not as a compliment.

Nostalgia is not a report

Here is what is actually going on when somebody tells you this is the best time, and knowing it takes the sting out.

They are not describing your life. They are remembering theirs, from thirty years away, with all the tiredness removed and the fear taken out and only the best three afternoons left in.

Nobody remembers being frightened about Friday. What survives is the laughing on the floor, and the first time somebody came round, and one particular evening in a room with no furniture in it.

That is a real and lovely memory, and it is not a description of what those years were like while they were happening.

You have been handed somebody's edited memory as though it were an assessment of your life, and a nostalgic sentence has never once been a report on how you are doing. It is written in Job 8:7 that a beginning is called small without a single word of decoration, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person put down a comparison nobody actually made.

And here is the second thing, which is more practical. Having no tools is not a permanent condition and it is not a large problem. It is a list, and lists get shorter.

Three or four things cover most of what a house needs for the first two years. A screwdriver with changeable heads. A hammer. A wrench that adjusts. Something to measure with. That is most of it, and every one of them can be borrowed this week from somebody who has two.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. Nothing on that list touches the dangerous category, and nothing should. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly, and if you rent, that is a call to the owner and not to you.

You are entirely right to have a short list and a hard line, and knowing what not to own has never once been a smaller kind of preparation. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a couple peace about a boundary, and Scripture names the small beginning plainly without asking anybody to pretend it is something else.

One tool, one job, together

So here is the ask, and the last word in it is the important one.

Borrow one tool this week and do one job with it together.

One. Not a set. Not a kit. The one tool that would let the specific job that is annoying both of you most get done, borrowed from somebody who has two, because somebody nearly always does.

You are able to get one tool this week and use it once, and beginning a household with one borrowed screwdriver has never once been a poor start. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a small ordinary beginning, and Job 8:7 names the smallness of a start without one word of shame attached to it.

Then do the job together. Both of you, in the same room, at the same time, even though it is a one person job.

That instruction is not sentimental. It is the whole point. What is heavy about this stage is not the lack of things. It is that two people are quietly enduring it separately in the same apartment.

Doing one small job together turns the place from something you are surviving into something the two of you are working on, and that is a different room to live in even when nothing else about it has changed.

You have permission to make this a thing you are building rather than a thing you are getting through, and one job done by two people has never once been a waste of one person's evening. It is written in Job that the beginning was small, plainly and without decoration, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in that apartment with you.