I Wrote The Question And Never Sent It

It is still there, or it is gone again, depending on which evening it is.

You wrote it out. Then you read it back and it was too long, so you cut it. Then the cut version sounded abrupt, almost rude, so you put some of it back. Then you added a line at the front explaining that you knew they were busy. Then you took that line out because it sounded like fishing.

Eleven times, roughly. You have lost count and eleven is about right.

And every evening it ends the same way, which is that you delete the whole thing and decide to ask another time.

Here is what I want to say before anything else. There is nothing wrong with the message. There has not been anything wrong with any of the eleven.

The editing is not editing. Editing would have finished after the second pass. Nobody ever told you that, and a gap in the teaching is not a gap in you. What has been happening for eleven evenings is something else wearing editing's coat, and until it gets named it will keep going, and there will be a twelfth.

What is actually being decided, each evening, is not the wording. It is whether the question is worth another person's time. And the wording is where that argument is being conducted, because the wording is the only part you can get your hands on.

The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him

There is a line about how close God stands to people who ask, and the reach of it is the part that matters.

The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. (Psalm 145:18, King James Version)

All them that call. Not the ones who called well. Not the ones who got the wording right. Not the ones whose request was short enough to be worth the hearing.

All of them.

You are included in a word that has no filter on it at all, and no request has ever once been turned away at the door for being too long. Psalm 145:18 says the LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true for somebody who has deleted the same message eleven times.

Now the second half, because it is the only condition in the verse and it is worth being exact. To all that call upon him in truth.

In truth. Not in eloquence. Not in brevity. Truthfully, meaning actually meaning it, which is the one thing your eleven drafts have never once lacked.

You have met the only condition attached to it, and meaning what you say has never once been the same thing as saying it beautifully. The Holy Spirit is the one who reads the meaning under the wording, and it is written that the nearness belongs to all who call in truth.

And there is a word at the front worth having, which is nigh. Not hears from a distance. Not attends to. Near.

The posture described is somebody already standing close, before the sentence is finished, and probably before it is well phrased.

You were already being listened to while the wording was still wrong, and a badly worded question has never once been held at arm's length by heaven. The Spirit of God is the one who is near while a person is still working out how to say it, and Scripture puts the nearness before any account of how well anybody asked.

What the editing is really doing

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not stop a twelfth draft.

Look at what each edit is actually adjusting. Shorter, so as to cost less of their time. Softer, so as not to seem demanding. Explanatory, so they will understand why it is being asked at all.

Every one of those edits is about the same thing, and it is not clarity. It is a woman pricing her question against somebody else's minutes, and finding she cannot afford it.

You are conducting an argument about your own worth inside a piece of punctuation, and no amount of rewriting has ever once settled a question that was never about wording. The Spirit of God is the one who names what is actually being decided, and Psalm 145:18 puts the welcome ahead of the phrasing.

And here is the second thing, which is quieter. Eleven evenings of this has cost you more than the question ever would have cost anybody.

Count it honestly. Eleven evenings of drafting is well over an hour. The answer to your question would take somebody about ninety seconds. You have spent forty times the price of the thing, protecting somebody from paying it.

You have already paid many times what the answer would have cost, and no evening spent on a draft has ever once been cheaper than the asking would have been. The written word puts the nearness with all who call rather than with the ones who ask economically, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the arithmetic a person has been avoiding.

Send the short one

Now the small thing, and it is not a new draft.

I am not going to help you word it, because the wording was never the problem and another pass would be the twelfth.

Go and find the shortest version you have written. Not the best one. The shortest. Then send that, tonight, exactly as it stands.

You are able to send a thing that has already been written eleven times, and one short message has never once been an imposition on anybody who loves you. Psalm 145:18 says the LORD is nigh unto all them that call, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present at the moment somebody stops editing and sends.

And put nothing at the front of it. No line about knowing they are busy. No apology. No explanation of why you are asking now rather than last week.

That preamble is the whole disease in one sentence, and taking it out is most of the cure.

Because the preamble does not soften the request. It tells the person receiving it that you consider yourself a cost, and now they have two jobs: answer the question, and reassure you that you were not a burden. The short version gives them one job, and one job is kinder.

You are giving somebody one job instead of two, and a plain short question has never once been the ruder of the two options. The Spirit of God is the one who takes an apology out of a woman's opening line, and it is written that the nearness is to all that call in truth.