He Brought Me into A Spacious Place
Ari, the hiker
“He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.”
—Psalm 18:19
Dearest Daughters,
Some people look at the traditional role of a woman, mother, wife, homemaker, and see something small. They feel it must be narrow, like a hallway without windows or a life with too few options. I understand that fear. The world has painted a narrow one-dimensional picture of womanhood. But I want to share something with you that has stayed with me since I was a child, something that returns to me again and again in my sleep.
I’ve had a repeating dream during my adult life of a little house, a house I once lived in as a girl. In the dream, I walk back through its rooms, and they are as tiny as I remember. I trace the walls with my eyes, remembering where the table stood, how the light came through the curtains, what it felt like to belong there. And then, always the same: I open a closet door. At the back of the closet is another door—one I had never noticed before.
When I open that second door, it’s like stepping into a miracle. There is a whole section of the house I didn’t know existed: broad, beautiful, welcoming spaces—well-furnished, full of light. Room after room, stretch far beyond what I lived in as a child. And in the dream, I say, again and again, “How did we not know this was here? Why did we live in only that tiny part of the house when all of this was ours?”
The life of a woman, the life in God’s design, is not narrow. But it can feel narrow if we never open the hidden or locked doors. The door of deep relationship. The door of true sacrificial love. The door of wisdom and shared sorrows and the kind of selfless care that makes space for others to grow. The door of prayer, where heaven bends low to meet us in our kitchens and bedrooms and laundry rooms.
When we live disconnected, when we don’t truly invest all into those roles that tie us to others, that demand vulnerability, we live only in the smallest corner of the house. But when we throw ourselves fully into the life God gives, investing everything in those relationships and responsibilities, the house opens up. We find that service is not drudgery but abundance, that giving our lives away enlarges them, and that the narrow hallway opens into a great hall where generations may gather and feast at His table.
We find that what looked small was only the entryway. The temple is just beyond.
“He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.”
—Psalm 18:19
With all my heart,
Mom
