Finished Badly Is Still Finished

You have been waiting for somebody to say it is all right.

Not in those words. Nobody would put it that way out loud. But the shape of the last year has been the shape of waiting for a permission that has not arrived.

And the strange part, once you look at it directly, is that there is nobody in the system who issues that. There is no person whose job it is to come and look and say yes, that counts, you may stop.

Your husband saying it does not do it. Your friend saying it does not do it. You have noticed that, which is why the waiting continues even though the words have been said several times.

Here is what that means, and it is the finding of this article. What you have been waiting for cannot come from outside, because there is nobody outside with the authority. The only person who can say that a thing in your house is finished is you.

And you have been treating that as if it were cheating, when it is actually the only mechanism there has ever been.

You are a woman whose own hands are the right hands, and flawed work standing in a house has never once needed better hands to have finished it.

His hands shall also finish it

There is a line in Zechariah about a particular man and a particular building, and the thing to take from it is not a promise about your house.

The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it. (Zechariah 4:9, King James Version)

His hands shall also finish it.

That is said about one named man and one specific building and I am not going to tell you it is about your room, because it is not, and this site does not do that.

What it does establish is something about hands. The same hands that laid the foundation are the hands that finish. Not better ones. Not somebody who came along later with more skill.

You have a word where the same hands that began are the hands that finish, and a job has never once been waiting for a better pair to arrive. Zechariah 4:9 names one set of hands at both ends, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that a statement about hands rather than a promise about a room.

And it is worth knowing who Zerubbabel was. Not a craftsman. A governor, working with people who were not builders, on a building that people who remembered the first one wept over because of how it compared.

The hands in that verse were not remarkable hands. They were the hands that were there.

You were never going to be handed better hands, and the hands that were there have never once been the wrong hands for a house. The Spirit of God is the one who works with what is present, and the written word names one set of hands at the start and at the finish without comparing them to anybody else.

Nobody is coming to authorize it

So here is the practical claim, and it is uncomfortable for about a minute and then it is a relief.

There is no authority outside you for this. None. Not out of loneliness, but because a house is not a thing anybody else assesses, and there is no office anywhere that issues completion certificates for a woman's own rooms.

Everybody who has told you it is fine has been telling you what they think, which is useful and is not the same as what you have been waiting for.

You have been waiting on an office that has never once existed, and a permission with no issuer has never once been a permission that could arrive. Zechariah 4:9 puts the finishing in the hands of the one who started, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that ordinary rather than lonely.

And here is why saying it yourself has felt like cheating.

If the standard is external, then meeting it is an achievement and failing it is a fact. If the standard is yours, then calling a thing done looks like moving the line, and moving the line looks dishonest.

But the line was always yours. There was never an external one. You have been holding yourself to a standard you also invented, and calling that a high standard rather than what it is.

You have been enforcing a rule you wrote yourself, and a standard with no author but you has never once been a standard you were obliged to keep. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that plain without making it a reproach, and Zechariah 4:9 keeps the whole thing inside one set of hands.

And one more, because permission is the actual thing this row is about.

You have the authority to say it and you have always had it, and the right to call your own work finished has never once belonged to anybody else. Zechariah 4:9 has the same hands at both ends, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while a woman uses an authority she has had the whole time.

Write it down and leave it there

Here is the assignment and it is written rather than spoken on purpose.

Write the words it is finished on a piece of paper, put it on the work, and leave it there overnight.

Those words. Not a note about what still needs doing. Not a list. Four words on a piece of paper.

You have four words available tonight and the authority to write them, and a written permission has never once needed a signature from anybody else. Zechariah 4:9 has the hands that laid the foundation finishing the house, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that table while a woman writes something she has been waiting to be given.

Written, not said, because this one needs to survive the night. Saying it disappears into the air and can be argued with by morning. A piece of paper is still there when you come down, in your own handwriting, and it is much harder to argue with your own handwriting.

Put it on the work. On the shelf, on the counter, taped to the wall. Where you will see it when you come into that room tomorrow.

Then leave it overnight. And in the morning, when you walk in and see it, read it once and leave it where it is.

You may take it down whenever you like. It has done its work by then.