I Will Not Let Anyone See The Paper

Somebody walked toward that drawer once and you got up faster than you meant to.

You covered it. You did not think about covering it. Your hand went out and the drawer went shut and you said something about the kettle, and the whole thing took about two seconds and nobody noticed except you.

And you sat down afterward with your heart going, and thought, that was strange.

Because there is nothing on that paper that would harm you if somebody read it. Not really. Anybody in your house you would trust with your life.

So the hiding is not about what is written down. It is about what the existence of the paper says, and what it says is: this woman has to write it down.

That is the whole of it. That is what the drawer is protecting.

And I want to say the honest thing first, which is that a great deal of energy is being spent every week keeping a small piece of paper out of sight of people who love you, and none of that energy is buying anything at all.

The darkness hideth not from thee

There is a verse about the reach of God's sight, and the comfort in it is a strange one until you sit with it.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. (Psalm 139:12, King James Version)

Both alike. Not the darkness is bad and the light is good. Alike. The same. No difference to Him whatsoever.

Which means there is no version of your life that is hidden and no version that is on display. There is only the one, and it has always been fully in view.

You are already fully seen and were never partly hidden, and no drawer in any house has ever once kept one thing from God. Psalm 139:12 says the darkness and the light are both alike to thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a comfort rather than a threat.

Now, whether that verse is frightening or restful depends entirely on what you believe He thinks when He looks.

And that is what the whole psalm is for. It ends with the writer asking God to search him, which is not something a man does with somebody he expects contempt from.

You were never being watched by somebody looking for a fault, and no honest life has ever once been searched by God in order to be graded. The Holy Spirit is the one who settles what God's face is like while He is looking, and it is written that the psalm ends in an invitation to be searched rather than a plea to be left alone.

And there is one more thing worth having. He has seen the paper. He saw it being written. He watched a woman work out a method with nobody to help her, and He has never once looked away from her in embarrassment.

That is not a small fact. It is the whole answer to a shut drawer.

You have been fully known while you were working it out alone, and no method a person invented has ever once made God turn His face away. The Spirit of God is the one who was in the room while the paper was written, and Scripture puts the darkness and the light on exactly the same footing.

What you are afraid it says

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not stop a hand going out toward a drawer.

Name the thing that paper is feared to say. It is worth putting into words rather than leaving as a shape.

It says: she cannot hold this in her head. It says: she needs a crutch. It says: something has slipped, and here is the evidence, in her own handwriting, in a drawer, where anybody could find it.

That is what the drawer is protecting. Not information. A verdict.

You are guarding against a verdict rather than against a discovery, and no page of ordinary handwriting has ever once been evidence about a person's mind. The Spirit of God is the one who names what is actually being defended, and Psalm 139:12 puts every hidden thing already in plain view.

And here is the part nobody has ever told you, because it is one of those facts everybody assumes everybody knows. Nobody holds these in their head. Nobody.

The people who appear to are using something. It is written down somewhere, or stored somewhere, or in a book, or on a card, and the only difference between them and you is that nobody ever told them their method was embarrassing.

That is a gap in the teaching. It is not a gap in you.

You have been ashamed of the one thing that every single person is doing, and no ordinary universal method has ever once been the evidence of a decline. The written word puts the night and the day on the same footing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman what everybody else is actually doing.

Say what you are afraid of

Now the small thing, and it does not involve showing anybody anything.

I am not going to suggest you leave the drawer open, or hand the paper to somebody, or make an announcement. None of that is needed and all of it would be too big a step for today.

Say out loud what you are afraid the paper says about you, and then say what it actually is.

You are able to say two sentences out loud in an empty room, and naming a fear has never once made it larger for anybody. Psalm 139:12 has nothing hidden and nothing exposed, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman says the thing she has been guarding.

The first sentence is the fear, in its own words. I am afraid this paper says I cannot manage anymore.

The second sentence is the fact. It says I wrote things down so I could find them.

Both out loud, in that order, in a normal voice. The order matters, because a fear spoken and then answered is a different object from a fear that has never been said at all.

You are putting a true sentence directly behind a frightening one, and two sentences said in order have never once been foolish behavior in anybody's kitchen. The Spirit of God is the one who is in the room when a woman finally says it, and it is written that the darkness hides nothing from Him and never did.