Forty Drafts And I Sent None

There are eleven of them saved in your notes app right now.

The long one from March. The short one you thought was too cold. The one with the photograph attached that you decided was unfair to send. The one that mentioned your mother, which you deleted about four seconds after writing because it was clearly a lever.

You have written something like forty of these over two years, and every single one has been abandoned at the same point, which is the moment you imagine her reading it.

Because you can see the face. You can see exactly how one clause could land wrong, and once you have seen that, the message becomes unsendable, and you save it and put the phone down and it is Tuesday again.

The version that does not exist

Let me describe the message all forty drafts were aiming at, because once it is described the two years make sense.

It has to be warm but not needy. It has to acknowledge the situation without raising it. It has to invite a reply without requiring one. It has to be impossible to read as an accusation, impossible to read as a plea, and impossible for anybody else in the family to misinterpret if she shows it to them.

That message does not exist. Not because you are a poor writer. Because those requirements are mutually exclusive, and you have been drafting toward a specification that no combination of words can satisfy.

You have been waiting for a message that cannot exist, and no sentence in any language has ever once been safe from being read the wrong way. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says he that observeth the wind shall not sow, which is the written word describing exactly this paralysis, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an imperfect sentence sendable.

And she is a whole person, and this is the part that will help most. She is not sitting there analyzing. She has a life and a job and a week, and a message from you will be read on a phone, probably while doing something else, and about eighty percent of what you have agonized over will simply not register.

She may also have drafts. She is right about at least one thing you have never conceded, and neither of you knows what the other has written and deleted.

You are able to send something to a person rather than to a jury, and one message read on a phone has never once been examined the way it was written. The Spirit of God is what puts a real reader back in the picture, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 11 that the one who watches the wind never sows.

He that observeth the wind

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. (Ecclesiastes 11:4, King James Version)

That is one of the most practical verses in the book, and it is not about laziness.

The man in that verse is not idle. He is careful. He is watching the sky, which is a sensible thing for a farmer to do, and he is trying to find the day when conditions are right so that the seed is not wasted.

And the verse says he will not sow. Not that he sows badly. That he never sows at all, because a farmer who requires perfect conditions will find that the sky always has something in it.

You have been observing the wind for two years, and no conditions have ever once arrived that a careful person could not find a problem with. It is written in Ecclesiastes 11:4 that he that observeth the wind shall not sow, which is the written word naming the exact failure mode, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a seed out of a hand that has been holding it since March.

And read what comes just after it in that chapter. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand, for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that.

Thou knowest not. That is the instruction. Not: work out which one will work. You are not going to know, and the not knowing is the condition under which sowing happens rather than an obstacle to it.

You are permitted to sow without knowing how it lands, and no farmer in scripture has ever once been asked to guarantee a harvest before putting a seed in. The Spirit of God is the one who takes responsibility for what grows, and Ecclesiastes 11 puts the not knowing right in the middle of the command to sow.

Sending the imperfect one

Here is the practical instruction and it is going to feel like giving up on quality.

Send the short one. Not the best one. The short one, and specifically the one with the least in it.

You are able to send eleven words that do not carry the whole two years, and a small message has never once been required to do the work of a conversation. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain sentence enough, and it is written that he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.

The reason the short one works is that it has less surface area. A long message has forty clauses that could land wrong. A message that says, saw this and thought of you, has one, and the one is unambiguous.

It also asks for nothing, which is what makes it safe for her to receive. She does not have to decide anything. She can reply or not reply and neither costs her.

And do not mention the past. Not one word. Not even a gentle reference to it having been a while, which feels kind and is actually a small invoice.

You are able to say a true thing with no invoice attached, and eleven words with nothing owed in them has never once been a lever on anybody. The Spirit of God is what empties a message of everything except the thing it says, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the sowing before the certainty and not after it.

If there is a reason contact would be unsafe for either of you, do not send it. That is real, this site does not know your family, and that one goes to somebody qualified where you live.