I Have Undone More Than I Have Ever Made

Do the sum with me once. I think it will be useful.

If every row you have taken out over the years had stayed in, what would exist by now?

Not a better version of what you have. A larger quantity of it. Finished things, plural, sitting somewhere in the house. Instead there is a smaller number of near perfect objects and an enormous invisible pile of work that was done and then removed, which nobody can see including you.

You have spent more hours undoing than making. That is not a figure of speech.

And I want to say the fair thing first, because you are not doing something contemptible. Every time you took a row out, you were right. It was wrong. You could see it, and once you had seen it you could not unsee it, and leaving it in would have meant looking at it every time you looked at the whole thing.

The undoing is not irrational. It is the only move available under the rule you are operating.

The rule is what I want to look at.

Nothing wrong may stand.

That is the rule. It has never been written down and nobody handed it to you and you probably did not notice adopting it. And under that rule, every mistake is an emergency, because a mistake that stays becomes permanent, and permanence is the thing that cannot be tolerated.

So the work never moves forward. It oscillates. Forward eleven rows, back eight, forward six, back nine.

And here is what that costs, beyond the hours. You never find out what the thing would have been, because the thing never gets far enough to become anything.

Reaching forth unto those things which are before

Paul writes a sentence about his own life that is often read as being about sin, and it is bigger than that. It is about direction.

He has just listed his credentials and dismissed them, and then he says something about how he handles what is behind him, and the word he uses is not forgiving or repairing.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. (Philippians 3:13, King James Version)

Forgetting those things which are behind.

You have permission to leave something behind unrepaired, and Philippians 3:13 calls the forgetting the one thing a man does rather than a concession. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a man to face the front when everything in him wants to turn round.

Not correcting them. Not going back to make them right. Forgetting, which in that language is a deliberate act of leaving something where it is and not turning around.

And notice the posture in the second half. Reaching forth. A man leaning toward what is ahead of him, which is a body position that cannot be held while also reaching backward.

You are being shown a posture that cannot face both ways, and Philippians 3:13 puts forgetting and reaching in the same movement. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an athlete's sentence from a prison letter and lays it on a man with a seam ripper in his hand.

And notice what he says first. I count not myself to have apprehended. He is not claiming to have got it right. He is saying so out loud and then going forward anyway.

You have permission to be visibly not there yet, and it is already settled in the written word that a man can say so and keep going in the same breath. His Spirit is the one who says that over a man who cannot let one wrong row stand.

A mistake that stays is not an emergency

Now let me press on the rule itself, because the rule contains a claim that is not true.

The claim is that a mistake left in becomes permanent, and that permanence is intolerable. And the first half is true, and the second half is the part that has never been examined.

Every made thing in the world contains errors that stayed. Every one. The chair under you, the building, the hymn, the book. The people who made them saw those errors, and let them stand, and the objects went on to exist and be used and be loved.

You are not obliged to remove what went wrong, and it is already settled in Philippians 3:13 that reaching forth and going back cannot be done at once. The Spirit of God is the one who makes leaving something alone a legitimate act.

An error that stays is not a wound. It is a feature of a thing having been made by a person.

And the count of your errors is not a measure of you. Nor is the count of your near perfect objects, which is the harder half of that sentence to hear.

You are not obliged to remove what is wrong, and heaven has never once required a work of hands to be free of error before it may exist. Philippians 3:13 has a man deliberately not going back, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes leaving something alone a legitimate act rather than a lapse.

And do not replace the rule with a target. Do not decide you will allow yourself three mistakes per project. A quota is the same rule with a permit attached, and you will spend the whole time counting.

You have permission to let one wrong line stand for good, and this is yours: forgetting what is behind is described as one thing I do rather than as a failure. It is written in Philippians 3:13 that he reaches forth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a man facing forward when everything in him wants to turn.

Twenty minutes, and leave one in

So here is the ask. It is one line.

Tonight, work for twenty minutes. And when something comes out wrong, leave it in.

Not all of them. One. The first clear mistake after you start, whatever it is, stays. Keep going past it and finish the twenty minutes with it still there.

You have one mistake that gets to live tonight, and Philippians 3:13 is where the leaving alone is called the one thing a man does. His Spirit is the one who keeps a hand off a seam ripper for a whole evening.

You will want to take it out for the rest of the evening. The pull will not fade the way discomfort usually fades, because your rule is still running and the mistake is still there. Do not act on it.

And do not take it out tomorrow either. Or next week. The line stays in that piece permanently, and every time you look at the piece you will see it, and that is the entire point of the exercise.

You are covered while one wrong line stands in your work for good, and Philippians 3:13 is the ground under that. The written word describes a deliberate refusal to go back as the one thing a man does, and the Spirit of God is present at a table where somebody is not reaching for the ripper.