A Chair On the Side Of The Road

When my husband cannot find something in the kitchen cabinet, I know what he will say.
Did you move things around?
The question is always the same.
The answer is always the same: No, everything is in the same place.

My husband does not know where things are in the kitchen.
We have lived in this house for eighteen years and the kitchen organization is the same.
He is not in and out of the cabinets as much as I am.
He truly does not know where things are, except for the things he uses everyday.

However, I don’t know where things are in his workshop.
I would not even begin to try to figure out his system.
I guess that makes us even.
We each have our own areas of the house that we know extremely well.

A place for everything and everything in its place, so said my mother.
Really, so said a book that she used to read to me; one I also read to my children.
The book told the story of Timothy and his messy room.
I loved hearing her voice as she read the rhyming words that sounded so good together.

I remember my favorite line, even to this day.
His shoe was askew on the windowsill.
I loved the way those words sounded.
Timothy didn’t clean his room and his mother decided to simply close his door.

Timothy thought it was fine for a while until he couldn’t find anything.
He had no clean clothes.
The snack that he left on the nightstand was beginning to change color and smell funny.
I remember thinking that his room was disgusting.

I never wanted my room to look like that.
I think that was what my mother was trying to accomplish.

We have back stairs in our house which was the always the staircase of choice.
My children would come home from school and they each had a step.
On that step, they placed their shoes, the ones that they wore everyday.
As they got older, my boys’ shoes were actually too big for the step.

Their shoes were placed there nonetheless.
One of my daughters could not remember to put her shoes on the step.
She would lay them on the rug right inside the door.
No one could get in or out of the laundry room unless they moved her shoes.

I tried everything I could think of to get her to remember this one simple request.
One day I told her that if her shoes were on the rug again, I would throw them outside.
She smiled, never thinking that I meant what I said.
She came home from school that day and placed her shoes on the rug.

Her shoes were on the rug next to the shoes from the day before.
When she came home from school the next day, her shoes were on the front lawn.
She saw them as soon as she got off the bus.
Embarrassed, she quickly gathered her shoes and carried them inside.

Her shoes were never on the rug again.
We were able to open the laundry door with ease.

I saw something today that was the epitome of out of place things.

We live literally twelve minutes from everything.
I have to drive everywhere, even to get a gallon of milk.
To leave my little town and go to the next one, I drive over a man-made lake.
It is a gorgeous spot, a state park that has kayaking, canoeing, and fishing.

I enjoy seeing the fishermen as I drive by.
The bridge over the lake is wide and each side has areas for the fishermen to park.
During fishing season, there are always cars along the bridge.
There are always people that stop to take pictures of the beautiful sunsets over the lake.

Today I saw it.
A comfy, upholstered chair on the side of the road.
A white pub chair that looked like it should be in someone’s family room.
Why was it sitting there?

Did a fisherman’s wife have enough and bring his comfy chair for him to sit on?
I imagined a woman in desperation, saying, well, you might as well live at the lake.
Since you like it there so much, here is your chair to sit on!
If the chair was broken and in disrepair, I would have thought differently.

But this chair was in perfectly good shape.
It was turned at an angle as if someone was ready to watch television.
It seemed so out of place but it made me laugh.
I thought of the rhyming book about Timothy and the shoes on my front lawn.

A chair on the side of the road made me laugh.
Someone may have been playing a joke on someone.
But I liked my scenario better.
I made up an entire story in my mind.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:31-33)

Somehow, the chair on the side of the road made me think of love and respect.
What if my scenario was right?
What if the husband was spending too much time fishing and not enough time at home?
What if the time away was making his wife feel unloved?

What if, feeling unloved, she tried to tell her husband what she was thinking?
What if her words fell on deaf ears?
What if the only thing she thought to do was put his favorite chair in his favorite spot?
What if he saw that and felt that she didn’t respect him?

A vicious cycle began because of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

God commands men to love their wives.
God commands women to respect their husbands.
Sometimes, even on the best day, that is hard to do.
We are fallen people who want what we want, when we want it.

We need God’s help to love like we should love.
We need God’s help to respect the way we should respect.
We need God’s help in our relationships.
We cannot do this by ourselves.

A chair on the side of the road.
How I wish I knew the real story.