I Tried And I Made A Mess Of It

You can see it from where you are sitting, probably.

The door that sits proud now, when before it was only a bit loose. The patch of wall that is a different texture. The screw hole that is bigger than a screw hole should be, with the filler you put in that did not quite work.

And here is what I know about it without having seen your house. It is worse than before you started, in some small visible way, and that is the fact that has been doing the damage.

Because the first thing was somebody else's fault. Things wear out, doors drop, taps drip. You did not do that. But this is yours. You put your hands on it and it got worse, and now there is a thing in your house with your name on it.

I am not going to tell you it looks fine. If it looked fine you would not be reading this, and if I say it looks fine you will stop believing anything else I say. It does not look fine. You made a mess of it.

Now here is the part I actually want to do, and it is not comfort exactly. It is a boundary.

You made a mess of a cupboard door. That is what happened. And it is the whole of what happened.

A just man falleth seven times

There is a line in Proverbs that is doing something quietly radical, and most people read straight past it.

For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. (Proverbs 24:16, King James Version)

A just man falleth seven times.

Read that again slowly. The falling is not the thing that disqualifies him. He is called just, and then he falls, and then he is still just. The word just is doing its work on both sides of the fall.

And seven is not a small allowance grudgingly made. Seven, in that book, is a full number. It is as many times as it takes. Nobody is counting up to a limit where the description changes.

What separates the two men in that verse is not whether they fall. Both fall. It is what happens after.

So the question in front of you is not whether you are competent. That was never the question and the verse is not interested in it. The question is only whether you get up, and getting up here is a small ordinary thing that I will name in a minute.

You are still what you were before the thing went wrong, and a failed attempt has never once changed the noun in front of your name. Proverbs 24:16 calls the man just on both sides of seven falls, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person's identity steady while they look at something they botched.

What the mess is, and what it is not

Here is the boundary I want you to be able to draw, because right now it is not drawn and everything is leaking through it.

What it is: a cupboard door that sits proud, a patch that shows, a hole that is too big. A physical situation in a room. Fixable by somebody, maybe you later, maybe not, and either way a small item in a house.

What it is not: evidence about whether you are capable. Proof that you should not have tried. A reason not to try the next thing. A thing your father would not have done. A comment on the kind of adult you turned into.

All of that second list is what you have been carrying, and none of it is in the room. The room only contains a door.

And I want to be careful about one thing here, because there is a version of this that scolds people gently and I am not doing it. Nobody is saying you should have known better. You could not have known better. Nobody has ever been able to do a thing well the first time they did it, and the fact that this one is visible in your kitchen does not make it a different kind of event from every other first attempt in human history.

You are looking at a physical situation in a room, and it has never once been an argument about what kind of adult you are. The written word lets a just man fall seven times without changing what he is, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a boundary that a person cannot hold on their own.

Go and look at it and say it out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is strange, and I want you to do it exactly.

Go and stand in front of the thing you botched, and say out loud what it is and what it is not.

Out loud. Words, in the room, with your voice. Something like: this is a cupboard door that does not sit right, and it is not proof that I cannot do things.

I know how that sounds. Do it anyway, and do it where nobody can hear you if that is easier.

The reason is not mystical. That thing has been talking to you every time you walk past it, and it has been doing all the talking, and you have never once answered it. Saying the boundary in the room, out loud, with your own voice, puts a different sentence into the same air. It is a small act and it does something that thinking about it does not do.

Proverbs 24:16 says a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is standing beside somebody talking to a cupboard door.

You are able to say out loud what it is and what it is not, and it has never once had the right to keep talking unanswered. Proverbs 24:16 keeps the man just through every one of the seven, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a person answers back.