I Finished The Blanket Anyway

You finished it.

That is the fact and I want to hold it for a second before anything else, because I do not think anybody has held it with you.

The blanket was two thirds done. And after, in the weeks when the house was full of people and then suddenly not, you sat down one evening and finished it. All of it. The edging, the ends worked in, properly, the way you would have.

You have told almost nobody. There is a reason for that and it is not shame, exactly. It is that saying it out loud invites a response, and there is no response anybody could give that would be the right one, and you would then have to manage their face.

So it is in a drawer, or a bag, or on a shelf, and it is finished, and you do not know what it is for.

I am going to be careful here, and I am not going to tell you what any of it means, because it is not mine to say and because you have almost certainly had enough of that already.

But I want to take one thing off you.

You are not required to decide.

Not this year. Not what to do with it, not what it was for, not whether it should be kept or given or put away, not whether finishing it was a healthy thing or a terrible one. Nobody is waiting for that decision and nothing is on hold because of it.

In thy book all my members were written

There is a psalm that goes further into this than almost anything else in Scripture, and I want to read it carefully rather than quickly.

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:16, King James Version)

Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect.

Unperfect there does not mean flawed. It means unfinished, unformed, not yet complete. And the verse says God's eyes were on that. Not after. Then.

You are seen in the unformed and the unfinished, and Psalm 139:16 puts the eyes of God there rather than at the end of anything. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a present tense way of being looked at out of the tenderest verse in the psalter.

And in thy book all my members were written.

A record. Written down. Complete in the book before it was complete anywhere else, and written by somebody who was looking.

You are known by a God whose eyes were on the unfinished and the unformed, and Psalm 139:16 puts the seeing there rather than at the end. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the most tender verse in the psalter and lays it down in a room with a finished blanket in a drawer.

And notice that this is not a general statement about people. It is written in the first person, about one particular person, in a book, by name.

You have a record kept of somebody in particular, and it is already settled in the written word that the writing happened when as yet there was none of them. His Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has told almost nobody.

Nothing has to be decided

Now let me stay on the decision, because I think it has been sitting on you.

There are things people say. Give it to a charity. Keep it. Put it away somewhere you will not see it. Use it. Every one of those has been said to somebody in your position by somebody who meant well.

None of them are due.

An object can sit in a drawer for a decade without a decision and nothing bad happens. It is not costing anybody anything. It is not blocking anything. The pressure you feel to resolve it is not coming from the blanket and it is not coming from God.

And this: finishing it was not a symptom and it was not a triumph. It was a woman with a thing in her hands and an evening. It is not evidence about how you are doing and nobody, including you, should be reading it that way.

You are not overdue on anything, and heaven has never once put a person on a schedule with their own grief. Psalm 139:16 has God writing in a book without any reference to time, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a deadline off a woman nobody set one for.

And if you want to hold it, hold it. That is allowed and it does not have to mean you are stuck. Holding a thing is not the same as being unable to let it go, whatever anybody implies.

You have permission to take it out and hold it and put it back, and this is yours: the seeing in that verse was of something unfinished and it was not waiting for completion. It is written in Psalm 139:16 that thine eyes did see my substance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a present tense way of being looked at.

Take it out, hold it, put it back

So here is the ask, and there is nothing to make in it.

This week, take the blanket out. Not to decide about it. Take it out and hold it for as long as you want to.

Then put it back where it was.

That is all of it. No decision at the end, no conclusion, no next step. If you cry, that is fine and it is not a setback. If you do not, that is also fine and it is not a sign of anything.

And if this week is not the week, then it is not the week. Nothing here is a duty. This is one of the very few things on this site that you may leave undone, and there is no version of that which is a failure.

You are held while you sit with something finished that has nowhere to go, and Psalm 139:16 is the ground under that. The written word keeps a record of somebody in particular with no timetable attached, and the Spirit of God is present in a front room with a blanket across a lap.