I Would Rather Nobody Saw It

It is finished and nobody has seen it.

That is a strange sentence and it describes a great many houses. The work is done. It has been done for weeks. And it is in a room that guests do not go into, or it is covered, or the conversation simply gets steered.

And the reason is not the work. You would be perfectly able to describe what is wrong with it, and what is wrong with it is small, and you know that too.

The reason is being seen having tried.

There is a specific kind of exposure in somebody looking at a thing you made, and it is different from somebody looking at a thing you bought. What they are looking at is a record of your effort and your judgment, and every flaw in it is a flaw with your name on it.

So it stays hidden. And a finished thing that nobody has seen is in a strange state, because it has all the cost of having been done and almost none of what finishing was supposed to give back.

You are a woman who finished something, and hiding it has never once meant you were ashamed of the work itself.

Do I seek to please men

There is a question in Galatians that Paul puts to himself, and it is worth noticing that it is a question rather than a denial.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, King James Version)

Or do I seek to please men.

He asks it. He does not open by declaring that he is above it. He puts the question to himself in writing, which is the behavior of somebody who knows the pull is real and worth checking rather than somebody who has never felt it.

You have a pull that an apostle thought worth auditing out loud, and caring what people think has never once been a strange defect in anybody. Galatians 1:10 asks the question rather than denying the impulse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest audit possible without it becoming a charge.

And notice the shape of the answer. If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

It is a question about who he is working for rather than about whether he is liked. The issue is direction of service, not the presence or absence of a feeling.

You were never being asked to stop having the feeling, and a question about who you serve has never once been the same as an instruction to care less. The Spirit of God is the one who resettles a direction, and the written word puts the whole thing in terms of service rather than in terms of feelings.

The audience is imaginary and it is specific

So here is the practical part, and the first move is to identify who is actually in the room.

When you imagine somebody looking at that work, somebody specific shows up. It is never a general public. It is a particular person, or a composite of two or three, and they have a face and a tone of voice.

Most people have never once identified who it is. And an unidentified judge cannot be assessed, cannot be contradicted, and cannot be compared against anybody real.

You have a specific face in that room that has never once been named, and an unnamed judge has never once been a judge anybody could answer. Galatians 1:10 asks a plain question about who is being served, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it safe to find out who has been standing there.

And here is the second thing, which is usually the moment it comes apart.

The people in your actual life are not that person. They are kinder, less interested, and considerably more distracted. Nobody real is examining your trim.

The imagined one is composed out of somebody from a long time ago, and it has been standing in that room ever since, uncontested, because nobody has ever brought a real person in to stand next to it.

You have real people available who have never once been in the same room as the imagined one, and a comparison has never once been possible while the work stayed hidden. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a true thing beside a supposed one, and Galatians 1:10 turns on the question of whose opinion is actually being served.

And one more, because this row must be practical. There is a rule that makes the showing survivable.

You have permission to show a thing without narrating it, and saying nothing about the flaws has never once been the same as pretending they are not there. Galatians 1:10 is about who is being served rather than about what gets said, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while a woman stands next to her own work and keeps quiet.

Show one person, and say nothing

Here is the assignment and the second half is the whole design.

Show the finished work to one person tonight, and say nothing about what is wrong with it.

One person. Whoever is easiest. Your husband, a friend on the phone with a photograph, whoever is nearest and safe.

You have one person who could see that work tonight, and showing somebody something has never once obliged you to explain it. Galatians 1:10 asks who is being served, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while a woman shows somebody a thing she made.

And then say nothing about the flaws. This is the rule and it is much harder than it sounds.

Do not say it is not straight. Do not say I know the corner is bad. Do not say I ran out of paint and had to. Every one of those is a way of getting your assessment in before theirs lands, and it is also a way of telling them what to look at.

Show it. Let them say whatever they say. Then change the subject.

They will almost certainly say something mild and slightly less interested than you expect, and that ordinary mildness is the most useful thing that could possibly happen, because the imagined judge has never once been mild about anything.