I Delete Them All And Worry I Lost Something Real

Your rule is simple and it has never failed you.

If you do not recognize it, it goes. No reading it properly, no working out what it wants, no deciding. Gone.

And it works. Nothing has ever got past that rule. In four years you have not had one bad afternoon, and I am not going to stand here and take that away from a woman who worked it out on her own.

But there is a small ache attached to it, and it has been there a while.

Because occasionally something goes that you half recognized. There was one in the spring that might have been about the church. There was one you thought might have been from the woman you used to work with, the one who moved away.

You will never know. That is the design of the rule. It does not tell you what it removed.

And so there is a small pile of might-have-beens in your mind, and it gets one more every couple of months, and you have never mentioned it to anybody because it sounds like nothing.

It is not nothing. It is a woman who has bought her peace with a small ongoing uncertainty, and nobody has ever helped her think about the price.

Let both grow together until the harvest

There is a parable about a field with two things growing in it, and the instruction the owner gives is the surprising part.

Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn. (Matthew 13:30, King James Version)

Let both grow. The servants wanted to go through the field and pull out the bad, and the answer was no.

And the reason given, in the verse before, is that pulling the bad would take some of the good with it.

You are inside a parable where a wise owner refused a sorting that would have cost him wheat, and no clearing has ever once been able to take only the bad. Matthew 13:30 says let both grow together until the harvest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that plain to a woman with a small pile of might-have-beens.

Now notice what the owner is not doing. He is not pretending there are no tares. He knows exactly what is in his field.

He is making a judgment about timing and about cost, which is a completely different thing from being naive.

You have been making the same judgment a wise owner made, and no decision about cost has ever once been the same thing as not knowing what is in the field. The Holy Spirit is the one who distinguishes a considered choice from an unexamined one, and it is written that the owner knew the tares were there and left them anyway.

And notice the last clause, which is where the comfort actually lives. Gather the wheat into my barn.

Nothing that was wheat is lost in that story. The sorting happens, eventually, by somebody who can tell the difference perfectly, and the wheat all arrives.

You were never going to be the one responsible for sorting the whole field, and no wheat in that parable has ever once failed to reach the barn. The Spirit of God is the one who does the sorting nobody else could do accurately, and Scripture puts the gathering of the wheat at the end where it cannot be missed.

What the rule is actually costing

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not shrink a pile of might-have-beens.

Weigh it honestly, both columns. On one side, four years without a bad afternoon, and a rule so simple it never fails under pressure. Those are real and they are worth a great deal.

On the other side, perhaps eight or nine things a year that might have been something, and none of them will ever be known.

You are running a rule that has never once let anything through, and no simple rule has ever been beaten under pressure by a complicated one. The Spirit of God is the one who values what a person actually built, and Matthew 13:30 has a wise man choosing to lose a little rather than risk a lot.

And here is the second half, which is the part that settles it. Anything that was genuinely important comes back.

That is the practical truth nobody has told you. A real person whose message went unanswered sends another one, or telephones, or asks somebody. A real matter arrives again, because real matters have somebody behind them who wants an answer.

The only things that do not come back are the ones with nobody behind them.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you.

You have never once lost anything that had a person standing behind it, and no real matter has ever come only once and then given up. The written word leaves the sorting to the harvest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman what actually happens to the things that matter.

Say what you think you lost

Now the small thing, and it does not involve changing the rule.

I am not going to ask you to start reading them. That would replace a rule that works with a judgment made under pressure, and this site is not going to hand anybody that job.

Say out loud what you think you might have lost, and then let it go.

You are able to name a thing out loud and then leave it, and one sentence has never once obliged anybody to go looking for anything. Matthew 13:30 has the sorting left to the harvest, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman finally says her small pile out loud.

Name them if there are two or three. The one that might have been about the church. The one that might have been from the woman who moved away.

Say them plainly, out loud, in the room. Then say the second part, which is the one that does the work. If it mattered, it will come back.

Because the pile has been sitting there unnamed for years, and unnamed things grow. Named things can be set down, and set down is what needs to happen here rather than sorted.

You are setting down a pile rather than sorting it, and naming a thing out loud has never once required anybody to do something about it. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person put a small worry down without solving it first, and it is written that both were left to grow until the one who could tell them apart arrived.