I Always Stop At The Same Point

You have watched yourself do this.

That is what makes it different from the other articles on this site. You are not confused about the pattern. You know exactly where it happens, because it has happened on the last four things you started, and you can feel it coming now when you begin something.

The beginning goes well. There is real energy in it. You get a visible amount done and it looks like it is happening.

And then you arrive at the part with no visible progress in it. And within about two sessions, the whole thing quietly stops.

Here is what I want to do, and it is not encouragement. Encouragement is useless here, because you are not short of willingness. You have started four times, which is four more than most people. What you are short of is an accurate description of the thing that keeps stopping you.

So let me describe it, because I think nobody ever has.

The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed

There is a line in Nehemiah, in the middle of a build that is going well, that is one of the most honest sentences in the Bible.

And Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall. (Nehemiah 4:10, King James Version)

The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish.

Look at where this sits. This is not the start, when everybody was enthusiastic. It is not the end, when the wall goes up. It is the middle of a project that succeeds, and this is what the middle sounds like from inside it.

And they name two things exactly.

The strength of the bearers is decayed. Not the leaders, not the planners. The people carrying things. The ones doing the repetitive, unglamorous, load bearing part are worn out, and that happens in the middle rather than at the start.

And there is much rubbish. That is the second half and it is the one nobody quotes. Halfway through any real build, the site is full of debris. The mess is at its worst exactly when the progress becomes invisible, and both of those things happen at the same time, and together they produce the sentence: we are not able to build the wall.

That sentence is in scripture, said by the people doing the work, on a project that finished in fifty two days.

You are standing where the builders of a successful wall said they could not do it, and that report has never once been a prediction of failure. Nehemiah 4:10 puts the words we are not able in the middle of a build that was completed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that recognizable rather than damning.

What the middle actually is

Here is the concrete description, because the middle is not a mood.

The middle of any project is the part where three things are true at once.

The visible progress stops. Everything you do from here looks the same as what was there before you started this evening. Filling, sanding, the second coat, the sorting of a box that then looks like a box. Real work, zero photograph.

The mess peaks. The site is at its worst. Everything is out and nothing is put away, which means the room is worse than it was before you began, and you are living in that.

And the novelty is gone. It is not new any more, and the part of you that showed up for the beginning is not interested in this and will not be turning up again.

That is the middle. Not a failure of character. A specific stage with a known shape, and every person who has ever finished anything went through it, and it felt to them exactly like it feels to you.

You are not stopping because something is wrong with you. You are stopping because nobody told you the middle exists, so when it arrives you read it as proof that this project was a mistake.

You are in a stage rather than a verdict, and the middle has never once been evidence about the kind of person you are. The written word names the decayed strength and the rubbish together as one report from mid build, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a nameless stage into a named one.

One session that is only the boring part

So here is the assignment, and it is chosen precisely.

Do one session that is only the boring part. Stop when the timer goes.

Set thirty minutes. Do the unglamorous thing: the filling, the sanding, the second coat, the sorting. Not the interesting bit, and not the bit that shows.

And here is why it has to be deliberate rather than incidental. If you go in hoping to feel good at the end, you will not, because that stage does not produce that feeling, and you will read the absence of it as failure again. If you go in knowing that this is a boring session and that boredom is what success looks like tonight, it cannot disappoint you.

You are not trying to get past the middle in one go. You are proving that a session inside it is survivable, which is the thing you do not currently believe.

And stop at thirty. Stopping on the timer while it is dull is what makes tomorrow possible.

Nehemiah 4:10 records the decayed strength without correcting anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in thirty minutes of work that nothing will show for.

You are able to work a session that produces nothing visible, and it has never once meant the project was a mistake. Nehemiah 4:10 has the builders say they are not able, on a wall that stood in fifty two days, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody doing the dull part on purpose.