You would think age gives people the maturity to enter and leave a room with the proper etiquette. Alas, life is not what you think it is. I’m not sure where I was taught this, but it has become a core part of my heart.
‘How you leave the room you are in, will determine how you enter the next room.”
I wish I knew where I heard that, but after so many years of saying it, it is just mine. What attitude do you leave a room with? Are you mad? The next room you walk in, you will carry the same mad with you.
Are you wearing a smart blazer? More than likely you will have it on in the next room you enter, unless of course you are changing clothes, but at the point you stop in one room, and take the time to change and prepare for the next room.
But clothes are not the same as the spirit and soul of person. Clothing is a poor example of the spirit and emotions that people carry from one room of life to another.
Back to the age and maturity thing I started with. So I used to wonder why people enter a new segment of their life and instead of entering that phase with a new spirit of excitement and joy, they enter it with dread, heartache, anger, division, hurt, or offense.
Like a child that hasn’t matured or an adult that hasn’t taken the time to grow by noticing, they are leaving the room they are in wrong, and carrying with them all the baggage of the old room. Say it again, ‘they leave the room wrong.”
These are the same people who will say this, “Everywhere I go…” and then it is a fill in the blank with how they have been wronged.
Years ago I had a lady come to my office and my wife and I listened to her story. Church after church she’d been in, which sounds like a lot but I think it was four churches over just about four years, had all reacted to her in the same manner. She asked us, “How come everyone treats me the same way?” She said she had been repulsed; people weren’t accepting of her; they questioned her motives; the leaders of the church always had a watchful eye; etc. I’d known her several years and every perspective she spoke of, I had to as a leader in a Church, so to be transparent I was exactly like the other churches or leaders although I did not know how any other church had felt about her.
I paused and asked her, “Do you not think that the common issue in all four churches was you?”
I mean I know that this is beyond the pale of reason for most to consider, and God forbid as you read this I’m talking about you and not your Mother-In-Law (or future Mother-In-Law), but could it possibly her, or I mean you, that is the reason every station of your life you carry the same issues.
Could it be that we are carrying hurts, pain, and grievances from one room of life to another that is causing the reaction we are getting? I know that many will never ever take the time to ponder this or even put themselves in the position of being asked, ‘but could you be the common issue in your life that causes the reaction you are receiving?”
Church is the greatest example of this I can give, so I’ll hold my examples to that arena, but the application is the same. How you leave one job, will affect the next? How you leave one relationship will affect the next? How you leave your home, will affect your job? And as the King said in ‘The King and I’, “Etc., Etc., Etc., and so on…”
This series will cover this topic from a natural perspective as well as a spiritual one, but has the hope you will ask yourself the question, “Is the room (season, job, relationship, etc.) I am in life still being affected by the past room?” My hope is that you will always enter every room in life with peace knowing that you finished well in the last room (or assignment) that you were in, and experience the favor and grace of success in the next room you enter.
I’d encourage you to stop reading if you are the child and enjoy blaming others, or read this with the thought, “I know someone who could use this.”
Growth and change in life doesn’t happen because you know how to apply it to others, but because you apply it to yourself.
So ask yourself this question and be honest.
“Are you at peace in the room you are in?” If you aren’t, I’d say you didn’t leave the old room you left the right way.
Stay tuned for the next part, How to Leave A Room Step 1…
