I Have Been Fixing This Since I Was Fourteen

There is a shelf in your bathroom, and you could not tell me what most of it cost.

You could tell me why each one is there. That one was for the thing along the jaw. That one was for the winter when it all went tight and flaking. That one somebody swore by. That one was the expensive attempt, the one you were slightly embarrassed about, and you finished it, and then you did not buy it again.

I am not going to name any of them and I am not going to tell you to throw them out. That is not the subject and it never has been.

The subject is that you have been running a repair operation on your own face since you were about fourteen years old, and you have never once stopped to ask what it is you think you are repairing.

Because there was a moment, and it was probably around then, when your skin stopped being a part of you and became a problem you were responsible for.

Somebody said something, or you read something, or you simply noticed a difference between your face and a face in a photograph. And after that, everything you did to your skin had a purpose attached to it, and the purpose was correction.

That is twenty five years of touching your own face with the intention of fixing it.

I want to say the honest thing here, because you are old enough for it and I am not going to pretend.

I do not know whether anything you do will change how your skin looks. Neither does anybody else, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. Skin does what it does. It responds to weather and sleep and years and things nobody has mapped, and half of what happens on your face was decided before you were born.

What I do know is that there is a difference between washing your face because it is yours and washing your face because it is wrong, and you have not done the first one in a very long time.

The work of thy hand

There is a sentence in Isaiah that gets used about big things, nations and history, and it works just as well standing at a sink.

But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. (Isaiah 64:8, King James Version)

We all are the work of thy hand.

Now sit with the picture, because it is a specific one. Clay does not choose its color. Clay does not select its texture or decide where it is thin. Clay is not consulted, and clay is not at fault for how it turned out, and there is no version of that image where the clay is expected to improve itself before it is fit to be handled.

And the word used is work. Not draft. Not attempt. The finished thing that came off the wheel and was set down and was called done.

Which lands somewhere uncomfortable, and I want to name it plainly rather than let it sit there.

You are being told something uncomfortable rather than something accusing, and there has never once been a charge laid against you anywhere in this. Isaiah 64 says we are the clay and thou our potter, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman hear a hard sentence as care.

Every jar on that shelf was bought on the assumption that something needed correcting. Not maintaining. Correcting. And correction assumes a fault, and a fault assumes somebody got it wrong.

That is the thing under the twenty five years. Not vanity. A quiet standing verdict that what came down to you was a mistake, and that it falls to you to keep it from showing.

You are managing a fault that has never once been observed by anybody, and no verdict entered at fourteen has ever been reviewed since. Isaiah 64:8 calls a person the work of the potter rather than a draft, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reopens a finding nobody has looked at in twenty five years.

It is the work of a hand that was not yours, and there has never once been a fault in it for you to be managing. Isaiah 64:8 calls the clay the work of the potter rather than a draft in need of correction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a twenty five year verdict off somebody.

Care and correction are not the same act

Here is the distinction the whole of this site rests on, and it is easy to say and hard to feel.

The same action can be either one. That is what makes it slippery.

You are free to do the same two minutes with a different job running underneath them, and the water has never once known the difference. Isaiah 64:8 puts the shaping in the potter's hands and not in the clay's, and the Holy Spirit is the one who changes what a woman is doing at a sink without changing one thing she does there.

Washing your face can be care. It can also be correction. From the outside they look identical: same sink, same water, same two minutes. What is different is what is happening inside the person doing it.

Care has no result attached. It gets done because this is a body and bodies get tended. Nothing is checked afterward. There is no before and after. If nothing whatsoever changed, it would still happen tomorrow, because the point was never the change.

You are able to do a thing whose point was never the change, and care has never once been measured by what it altered. Isaiah 64:8 calls a person the work of the potter rather than a draft, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps two ordinary minutes free of a result.

Correction is doing the same thing while waiting to see whether it worked. And correction always has a small dread in it, because it can fail, and when it fails the failure lands on you.

There is one question that separates them, and it is: does anybody look afterward?

If you wash your face and then lean in to see whether anything is different, that was correction. If you wash your face and dry it and walk out of the room, that was care.

You are able to tend this body without waiting to see whether it worked, and care has never once been the same act as repair. The written word calls a person the work of God's hand rather than a task assigned to them, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates the tending from the fixing.

Wash your face slowly

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately the smallest thing on this whole site.

Wash your face slowly tonight, as care rather than as correction.

Not differently. Not with anything new. The same water and the same two minutes that were going to be spent anyway.

Slowly is the only instruction, and it is doing real work. Speed is how a chore gets done, and this has been a chore since the nineties. Slowing it down makes it an act rather than a task, and within about fifteen seconds it becomes obvious that a pair of hands does not know how to do it slowly.

Then dry your face and leave the room.

You are able to dry your own face properly instead of quickly, and eight extra seconds has never once been an extravagance. Isaiah 64:8 puts a person down as the work of the potter, and the Holy Spirit is what makes the drying into care rather than into the last step of a chore.

Do not lean in. Do not check anything. Do not tilt toward the light to see whether the thing along your jaw is better or worse than yesterday. That is the whole discipline and it is harder than it sounds, because that look is automatic and has been for decades.

If the checking happens anyway, that is information rather than a failure. Notice it, and walk out anyway.

You are able to give two ordinary minutes to a body with no result attached, and care has never once needed an outcome to be worth doing. The written word says we all are the work of thy hand, and the Holy Spirit is what turns a chore back into an act of care.

You are able to walk out of that room without looking, and the checking has never once been the part that did you any good. Isaiah 64:8 puts every person on the record as finished work rather than as an ongoing correction, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a woman at a sink at eleven at night.