I Made Sure It Would Turn Out Well

Nobody would ever call it interfering.

You do not take things out of her hands. You do not correct her. You are, by every visible measure, one of those parents who lets a child get on with it.

What you do happens earlier.

You put out the materials that behave. You quietly set aside the one that never works. You choose the thing that she can definitely do rather than the one she might not manage, and you do all of this before she comes into the room, so that by the time she sits down the outcome has been arranged.

And it works. It works every single time. She sits down, she does it, it turns out, she is pleased.

I want to look at what is not in that room, because that is where this lives.

There is no risk in it.

She has never once sat down at that table not knowing whether it would work. Every session has had a guaranteed ending, quietly installed by somebody who loves her, and she has never had the experience of putting her hands on something and genuinely not knowing.

And that experience is not a nice extra. It is most of what making is for.

The pleasure at the end is not the pleasure of a thing turning out. It is the pleasure of a thing turning out when it might not have. Take the might not out and what is left looks the same from the outside and is a different substance entirely.

Not by might, nor by power

There is a word given to a man who is standing in front of a job much larger than his resources.

Zerubbabel is trying to rebuild a temple with no money, no army and a small discouraged workforce. And the word that comes is not a plan.

Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6, King James Version)

Not by might, nor by power.

Might and power are the two things a person reaches for when an outcome must be secured. Force and resources. Arrange enough of both and the thing cannot fail.

And the word says the securing is going to come from somewhere else entirely.

You are being told that a secured outcome was never the arrangement, and Zechariah 4:6 removes might and power from the equation by name. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a word given over an impossible building project and lays it down on a kitchen table set out before a child walks in.

And notice what is not offered instead. He does not hand Zerubbabel a better method. He points at the Spirit and stops.

You have a God who did not replace one guarantee with another, and it is already settled in the written word that the securing was moved off human arrangement entirely. His Spirit is the one who says not by might over a woman who has been arranging outcomes for years.

What the arranging removes

Now let me set out what actually goes missing, because it is easy to miss when everybody is pleased.

She never finds out that she can recover from something.

When a thing goes wrong at that table, and it never does, she would learn that a wrong turn is survivable. She would try something. It would probably not work either. And she would find out, in her own hands, that a project going badly is not the end of a project.

You are able to leave an outcome genuinely open, and Zechariah 4:6 takes might and power off the securing of a work by name. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands nothing back in their place except Himself.

That is a thing a person carries for life and it cannot be taught by anybody. It can only be met.

And there is a second thing. She has never had the good version of the feeling either, because the good version requires the risk. Her pleasure at that table is a mild and reliable pleasure, and the one she has not had is the sharp one.

And this: how her things turn out is not a measure of her, and how smoothly the afternoon runs is not a measure of you. Nobody is inspecting either.

You are not protecting her by arranging it, and heaven has never once secured an outcome so that somebody could avoid the finding out. Zechariah 4:6 takes might and power off the table, and the Spirit of God is the one who leaves a thing genuinely open.

And do not set her up to fail either. This is not about engineering a disaster to teach her something. Put out what is there, honestly, including the awkward one, and let the afternoon be what it is.

You have permission to leave the outcome open, and this is yours: the securing was moved off human arrangement in that verse and never given back. It is written in Zechariah 4:6 that it is by my spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a table where nobody knows how it ends.

This week, let it be genuinely uncertain

So here is the ask.

This week, before she comes in, do not set the table.

Put out everything, including the material that never behaves and the one you always quietly remove. Let her choose. Let her choose the difficult one if she chooses it.

You are handing an outcome back to God rather than securing it, and Zechariah 4:6 takes might and power off the table by name. The Holy Spirit is the one who leaves an afternoon genuinely open when everything in a mother wants it closed.

And then do not intervene. Not at the start when you can see where it is going, not in the middle when it starts going there, and not at the end when a small adjustment would rescue it.

If it fails, let it fail, and stay at the table while it does. Do not fill the silence with encouragement, and do not offer to help her start again.

And make something of your own beside her, badly, with the awkward material, so that there are two projects in trouble at that table and one of them is yours.

You are covered while an afternoon goes genuinely wrong, and Zechariah 4:6 is the ground under that. The written word takes might and power out of the securing of a thing, and the Spirit of God is present at a kitchen table where nobody has arranged the ending.