Waiting For Somebody To Say It

You cannot call it good until somebody else does, and when they do you decide they were being nice.

That is the loop, and it has no exit in it, and you have been in it for years. The work is finished. You look at it and you genuinely do not know. Then you send it, and the person says something lovely, and instead of that settling it you think, well, she would say that.

So you have arranged a system where the verdict can only come from outside, and then you disqualify every verdict that arrives.

And you are not fishing and you do not want praise. You would find praise uncomfortable. What you want is to know, and you have decided that knowing is not something you are allowed to do for yourself.

I am not going to tell you to validate yourself, which is a phrase from a different sort of website. I am going to show you a sentence of Paul's about whose approval he was working for.

Do I now persuade men, or God

There is a sharp question in Galatians where Paul names the two possible audiences and makes it clear he has chosen one.

He has been under attack and he is not defending his feelings, he is naming where the verdict comes from.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, King James Version)

You are working in front of somebody whose verdict does not move, and it has never once depended on a message arriving. Galatians 1:10 names two audiences and puts the servant's standing with the one who does not need convincing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a bright workroom with a finished piece on the table.

Notice that it is a question with two options in it and no third one. Men, or God. There is no arrangement where a person is working for both, and Paul is not being harsh about it, he is being clear.

And notice what he is not doing. He is not claiming his work is beyond criticism. He is saying that the verdict on it is not issued by the room.

You have an audience already present in that workroom, and the verdict has never once had to travel to reach you. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a sharp question from a letter reach a woman looking at something she has just finished, and Galatians 1:10 puts the two audiences side by side and chooses.

Why their verdict never sticks

Let me say why the lovely message does not settle it, because the mechanism is worth seeing.

A verdict from outside has to pass through your judgment before you can accept it, and your judgment is the very thing that is not working. So it arrives, and the same faculty that could not decide whether the work was good decides whether the compliment was sincere, and it fails at that too.

You were never going to be settled from outside, and no message has ever once been able to do it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman why the loop has no exit, and the written word names the two audiences and chooses one in Galatians 1:10.

And here is the part that will be uncomfortable. You do know. You knew when you finished it. There was about four seconds before the doubt arrived where you looked at it and knew exactly what it was, and then the machinery started.

Four seconds. Everybody has them. The work is to say something in them.

You are able to say your own verdict first, and saying it has never once been the same as claiming it is perfect. His Spirit is the one who gets a woman's own word out before the machinery starts, and Galatians 1:10 takes the verdict out of the room and puts it somewhere that does not shift.

Say it first

So here is the exercise, and first is the whole of it.

Say out loud that the last thing you made is good, before anybody else sees it. Before you send the photograph, before you wrap it, before it goes anywhere near another person.

You are able to speak before the room does, and speaking first has never once been vanity. Galatians 1:10 puts the verdict with God rather than with the audience, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes four honest seconds possible for a woman who has waited years for a message.

Say it in the four seconds. That is why it has to be first. Once it has gone out and a verdict is in the post, your own word is a reply to somebody else's and it has lost its place.

And when the lovely message arrives afterwards, say thank you and let it be a nice thing that happened rather than the ruling. It was never the ruling. It was always a person being kind.

You were never waiting for information, and a kind message has never once been able to give you what you wanted. The Spirit of God carries a woman's own honest word out before the doubt arrives, and the written word chooses between the two audiences plainly in Galatians 1:10.