Nine Drafts In The Folder

There are nine of them now, and you have written every one of them to the same man.

They are all polite. Some are warmer than others. The fourth one is the best one, and the seventh is the one you nearly sent, and the ninth is the one you wrote at half past eleven last night when the house was quiet.

And every single one of them has the same sentence buried in the middle, phrased nine different ways: was there something I could have done.

You have not sent any of them. That is the one good thing in this and it is worth saying before anything else. But you have spent four evenings writing them, and the man himself has spent none.

I am not going to tell you to be more professional and I am not going to help you get him back, which would be strategy and there is none of that on this site. I am going to talk about what those nine drafts are for, because they are not for him.

In the multitude of words

There is a proverb about how much a person says, and it has a kindness in it that is easy to miss.

It is usually read as a warning about gossip. Read it as being about a man at a table at half past eleven, writing a ninth version of the same message.

In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise. (Proverbs 10:19, King James Version)

You are wise in the holding back, and it has never once been cowardice. Proverbs 10:19 calls the restraint the wise thing rather than the weak thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a dining table with a laptop open on it.

Notice that the verse does not say the words were wrong. It says that in a great many of them something goes astray, which is a different and more merciful claim.

And then it puts the weight on the other side. He that refrains his lips is wise. Not silent, not passive, not afraid. Wise, which is the word Scripture keeps for people who can see what is actually happening.

You have already been doing the wise thing nine times over, and it has never once needed anybody to notice. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a proverb about too many words reach a man rereading his own fourth draft, and Proverbs 10:19 calls the restraining of the lips wisdom and says so plainly.

Who the drafts are for

Let me say what the nine drafts are actually doing, because it is not communication.

They are a way of continuing the relationship. While there is a message being written, the thing is not over. As long as the draft exists, there is still something outstanding between you and him, and the ending has not fully happened yet.

You were holding something open, and it has never once needed to stay open. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own unsent messages have been keeping alive, and the written word calls the restraining of the lips wise in Proverbs 10:19.

And the sentence inside them, the was there something I could have done, is not really a question. It is a request. You are asking a man to tell you that you were good, and he is not in a position to do that, and it would not work anyway, because you would not believe it.

That is the whole of it. Nine drafts, four evenings, and a request nobody can fill.

You are not waiting on a verdict from anybody, and you never were. His Spirit is the one who lets a man close a thing without an ending he can be satisfied with, and Proverbs 10:19 puts the wisdom on the side of the man who keeps his lips shut.

Delete them

So here is the exercise, and it is deliberately final.

Delete the drafts. All nine. Not archive, not move them to a folder to look at in a month. Delete.

You are able to close this yourself, and closing it has never once been pride. Proverbs 10:19 calls the holding back of words wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes nine deletions possible for a man who has written four evenings into them.

It will feel like losing something, and it is losing something, which is why it is hard. You will be deleting the last live connection between you and a man you worked with for three years.

Do it anyway. A live connection nobody else can see is not a connection.

You were never going to get an explanation out of that folder, and it has never once had one in it. The Spirit of God carries a man past the need for a last word, and the written word sets the multitude of words against the wisdom of restraint in Proverbs 10:19.