I Want To Try But I Am Afraid Of Making It Worse

You are not refusing. That is what makes this one different.

You want to do it. You have thought about doing it. You have stood in front of the thing more than once and had the beginning of a plan, and then you have gone and done something else, and the reason you gave yourself was that you might make it worse.

And here is the thing about that reason. It is a good reason. It is not an excuse and I am not going to treat it like one. You might make it worse. That is a real possibility and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

But look at what you have done with it. You have made it a condition. You have decided, without ever saying it in words, that you are allowed to start once you are reasonably sure it will not go wrong.

And that condition can never be met. Not for a first attempt. Being reasonably sure it will go right is the thing that arrives at the fourth attempt, and you have been trying to get it before the first one, which is a door that opens from the other side.

So let us look at what you are actually waiting for.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow

There is a line in Ecclesiastes about farming that is really about the exact position you are standing in.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. (Ecclesiastes 11:4, King James Version)

He that observeth the wind shall not sow.

That is a man standing at the edge of a field, and he is not lazy, he is not careless, and he is not refusing. He is watching the weather. He is doing something that looks entirely responsible, and he has been doing it for a while.

And the verdict on it is quiet and final: that man does not sow. Not because a rule stopped him. Because the wind never becomes reliably right, and the watching has no natural end, and while he watches, the season goes past him.

There is no scolding in that verse. Nobody calls him a coward. It simply reports what happens to a person who requires the conditions to settle before he acts, and what happens is that nothing gets planted.

You are able to act before the conditions settle, and heaven has never once required certainty of you before a first attempt. Ecclesiastes 11:4 shows a careful man losing a season to watching rather than to failing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land without shame on somebody frozen at the edge of a job.

Making it worse has a size

Here is the practical thing, and I think it will help more than any encouragement.

Ask what worse actually looks like. Specifically. Not the feeling of worse, the size of it.

Because your body is treating this like an unbounded risk, and almost none of these jobs are. If you try to fix the cupboard door and get it wrong, the outcome is a cupboard door that is still wrong. That is where it ends. You are not going to open a hole in the building.

Say the actual worst case out loud and you will usually find it is a small, boring, recoverable thing, and often it is exactly the situation you are already in.

That is not true of everything, and this site says so in every article. Gas is not yours. The fuse box is not yours. Anything structural, anything above a step stool, those are not tests of your courage, they are jobs where worse means something serious and the answer is a professional and no shame in it.

But a hinge is not that. A washer is not that. A shelf is not that. For those, worse is small and you can name it.

You are able to name the worst case in one sentence, and it has never once been as unbounded as your body has been treating it. The written word watches a man lose a season to conditions that never settle, and the Spirit of God is the one who cuts an imagined risk down to its actual size.

The smallest version, tonight, badly

So here is the assignment, and I want it small enough that you cannot fail to begin.

Do the smallest version of the job tonight, badly if necessary.

Not the job. The smallest version of it. If it is a shelf, put up the smallest shelf in the least important place. If it is a hinge, tighten the one screw that is loose rather than rehanging the door. If it is a tap, take the handle off and look at it and put it back.

And badly is not a concession I am making to be nice. It is the specification. If it comes out crooked, leave it crooked. A crooked shelf that you put up is worth more than a straight one that never existed, and it is worth more for a reason that has nothing to do with the shelf: it is the first piece of evidence you will have that you are somebody who does things in their own house.

Ecclesiastes 11:4 says the one who watches the wind does not sow, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a person from the edge of the field into it.

You are able to begin tonight at the smallest possible size, and it has never once needed to come out straight to count as begun. Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the loss in the waiting rather than in the attempt, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a first attempt that goes badly.