I Am Already Picking It Apart

The first one arrived at about eight.

It was finished by six, and there were two good hours, and somewhere around eight you saw the thing near the window and that was the end of the two hours.

The second one came the next morning. The third one the same day. There are now about nine, and they arrive at a rate of roughly one a week, and every one of them is real.

That is the part that makes this so hard to interrupt. They are not imaginary. Every single fault on that list is genuinely there and could be pointed out to somebody, and if you pointed it out they would agree.

So it cannot be argued with. And it cannot be argued with by anybody else either, which is why nobody has been able to help.

Here is what is worth looking at instead of the faults. The rate.

One a week, forever, is not a discovery process. A discovery process finishes. Something that produces one a week indefinitely is not finding faults in a wall, it is doing something else, and the wall is only where it is being done.

You are a woman with a finished thing and a running list, and a fault found at eight in the evening has never once been a fault that changed the work.

Take us the foxes, the little foxes

There is a line in the Song of Solomon about small things and what they do, and the doubling in it is the part to notice.

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. (Song of Solomon 2:15, King James Version)

The foxes, the little foxes.

Said twice, and the second time with the word little added. That is not decoration. It is the verse insisting on the size, because the size is the whole reason they are dangerous.

A large animal in a vineyard gets dealt with. Everybody sees it and everybody agrees about it. A little fox is small enough to be ignored individually and it spoils the vines anyway.

You have small things named specifically as the ones that spoil, and something too small to be worth mentioning has never once been too small to do damage. Song of Solomon 2:15 says little on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a warning about size rather than about seriousness.

And look at the verb. Take us the foxes. Take them. Catch them, remove them, get them out of the vineyard.

It is not an instruction to look at them more carefully or to keep a count of how many there are. It is an instruction to get them out, which is a completely different relationship to a small thing.

You were never told to catalogue them, and a thing that is meant to be removed has never once been a thing anybody was asked to keep a list of. The Spirit of God is the one who takes rather than counts, and the written word uses a verb about removal rather than a verb about noticing.

The rate is the thing, not the faults

So here is the practical claim, and it is about arithmetic.

Nine faults in a finished room is not remarkable. Any room has that many. A room done by a professional has that many, and the professional does not know about most of them and neither does anybody who lives there.

What is remarkable is one a week, arriving on schedule, with no end in sight.

You have a rate rather than a set, and nine faults arriving one at a time has never once been the same as nine faults being found. Song of Solomon 2:15 asks for the small things to be taken, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell a search that ends from one that does not.

And here is why the rate does not stop, and it is not perfectionism exactly.

An unfinished thing is protected. A finished thing is exposed. And something in a person that is not comfortable with a thing being exposed will keep finding reasons it is not really finished, and it will find real ones, because there are always real ones.

That is not dishonesty. Every fault it produces is true. It is a search that is being run because of what would happen if it stopped.

You have a search running for a reason that has nothing to do with the wall, and a true fault has never once been evidence that a search was honest. The Spirit of God is the one who sees what a search is for, and Song of Solomon 2:15 asks for small things to be taken out rather than turned over.

And one more, and it is what the assignment does.

You have a way to stop a list growing that does not require you to disagree with a single item on it, and a written list has never once needed to be argued with to be closed. Song of Solomon 2:15 uses the verb take, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ending possible for something that has been running weekly for months.

Write them down and put them in a drawer

Here is the assignment and it does not ask you to deny anything.

Write down the faults you can find. All of them, tonight, in one sitting.

Go and look properly. Take as long as you like. Be thorough, which is the thing you are good at, and get every one of them onto the page.

You have a list that can be completed in one evening, and writing every fault down has never once been the same as agreeing that they do not matter. Song of Solomon 2:15 names the little ones by name, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while a woman writes out nine things about her own work.

That is the first half and it is the half that is easy for you.

Then put the paper in a drawer and do not add to it.

That is the rule and it is the whole of this. Not that the list is wrong. Not that the faults are imaginary. The list is closed, on that evening, and anything that arrives afterward does not get written down.

You have one arriving next week on schedule, and noticing a thing without writing it down has never once been the same as pretending it is not there. So when it comes, leave it unwritten, and that is the whole of what is required. Song of Solomon 2:15 asks for the little ones to be taken out, and the Spirit of God is the one present on the Thursday it arrives.

Here is what that does. A closed list is a set, and a set is finite, and a finite set of nine small things in a finished room is a completely ordinary thing that everybody has. A running list is not finite and is not ordinary and is what has been costing you.