I Want To Redo The Part I Did

You would do it differently now.

That is true, and it is worth saying straight out, because half the difficulty here is that the instinct is not wrong. Two years of looking at it has taught you something, and you can see now exactly where the first bit went slightly astray.

And so every time you think about picking it up, the first move that suggests itself is not the next step. It is going back.

Take that off. Redo that corner. Sort out the join where you can see the seam. Then, once that is right, carry on properly.

It sounds like diligence. It is the most reasonable sounding thought in this entire house.

Here is what it actually is. It is a restart with a respectable job title, and it is why nothing has moved in two years, because the going back has never once fitted into an evening and the going forward never gets reached.

You are a woman with work already standing in that room, and a part you would do differently now has never once been a part that has to come out.

Remember ye not the former things

There is an instruction in Isaiah that sounds at first like a command to forget, and is nothing of the kind.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. (Isaiah 43:18, King James Version)

Neither consider the things of old.

The word consider is the one to stop on. It is not about memory. It is about attention. Do not spend your looking on what is behind, is what is being said, and the sentence immediately after it in the chapter is about a new thing already springing forth.

So the instruction is not about erasing anything. It is about direction of gaze, and it comes with a reason, which is that something is happening ahead and you will miss it if you are facing backward.

You have been considering the things of old for two years, and the instruction to stop looking back has never once been an instruction to undo any of it. Isaiah 43:18 addresses where the attention goes rather than what has to be corrected, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a person around without asking them to demolish anything.

And notice who is being spoken to there. This is said to people with a great deal behind them, some of it good and some of it not, none of which is being deleted.

The former things stay. They are simply not the subject any more.

You were never asked to make the earlier work disappear, and a thing you are told not to dwell on has never once been a thing you are told to remove. The Spirit of God is the one who makes the difference between those two clear, and Isaiah 43:18 uses the word consider and not the word destroy.

Going back is four times the job

So here is the practical part, and it is arithmetic before it is anything else.

Doing the next step is small. Going back and redoing the first part is large, and worse, it is uncertain, because once the first part is opened up nobody knows what else comes with it.

So the thing that gets scheduled is the large uncertain job, and large uncertain jobs do not fit into a Tuesday, and so nothing happens on any Tuesday.

You have been scheduling the wrong job into evenings that could only ever hold the other one, and the next step has never once been the thing that would not fit. Isaiah 43:18 turns the attention forward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts the small available thing back in front of a woman who has been staring at the large one.

And here is the thing underneath it, which is not about carpentry.

Redoing the first part is a way of not having to let it stand. Letting it stand means accepting something imperfect with your name on it in your own house, permanently, where you will see it.

That is genuinely uncomfortable and it is worth naming rather than pretending the whole thing is a scheduling issue.

You are avoiding a feeling and not a task, and letting something imperfect stand has never once been the same as approving of it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that bearable rather than demanding it be resolved, and the written word tells people to stop considering what is behind them because something is going on ahead.

And one more, because this row must not end in resignation. Nothing here says the corner can never be fixed.

You have a corner that can be revisited some other year, and postponing a correction has never once been the same as abandoning it. Isaiah 43:18 is about where the attention goes now, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a thing open without keeping it in the way.

Say it stands, then go forward ten minutes

Here is the assignment and the first half of it is the odd one.

Go and put your hand on the part you already did, and say out loud that it stands.

Those words, or close to them. This stands. I am not taking this out.

You have a sentence available tonight that ends a two year argument, and saying a thing out loud has never once required you to feel it first. Isaiah 43:18 tells people to stop considering the former things, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while a woman puts a hand on her own imperfect work and says four words.

It will feel like giving something up, and that is accurate, because it is. What is being given up is the possibility of a perfect version, and that version was not available in any case.

Then do the next undone thing for ten minutes. The actual next thing, whatever it is, however unsatisfying it is to work forward from something you would rather have fixed.

Ten minutes. Then stop, and do not go back to the corner on the way out.