I Have A Degree For This

There is a frame on the wall in the hall.

And this week you have taken work that does not require it, does not mention it, and would have been done exactly as well by somebody who never went.

I want to be careful here, because this subject attracts two kinds of nonsense and I do not want to hand you either.

The first kind says the qualification was a waste of time. It was not. You learned things and you are not sorry you went.

The second kind says none of it matters and work is work and you should not feel anything about it. That is not true either, and being told not to feel a thing has never once stopped anybody feeling it.

You are not a failed version of anything, and a qualification on a wall has never once been a debt that had to be repaid in job titles.

Here is what I actually want to look at, because I think it is the real object.

Somewhere, probably before you were fifteen, a definition got installed. It said: a person like you does this kind of work, and not that kind. And the definition was installed by people who loved you and wanted good things for you, which is exactly why it has such a hold.

That definition is now telling you that this week is a failure. And the definition has never once been examined by the adult who is carrying it.

God hath chosen the foolish things

There is a passage in Corinthians that takes the world's ranking system and turns it upside down, and it does it on purpose rather than as a comfort.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. (1 Corinthians 1:27, King James Version)

God hath chosen.

That is a deliberate selection. It is not making the best of a bad situation and it is not a consolation offered to people who could not get the other thing.

You are inside a passage where the low ranked thing was chosen on purpose, and a position the world sorts downward has never once been the thing God had to settle for. 1 Corinthians 1:27 says but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who made that a choice rather than a concession.

And look at the word confound. The chosen thing is not merely permitted. It is put there to embarrass the ranking system itself.

The whole verse is an argument against the sorting, made by putting the wrong thing in the right place on purpose.

You have been sorted by a system that God is on record as confounding, and a ranking of work into higher and lower has never once been His ranking. The Holy Spirit is the one who overturns that sorting, and it is written in 1 Corinthians 1:27 twice in one sentence with two different pairs.

Who is actually watching

Let me ask the question that usually cracks this open, and it is not a rhetorical one.

Who specifically is disappointed.

Name them. Say the name out loud if you can. Most women who do this find that the list is either one person, or one person who has been dead for some years, or nobody at all and it is a composite made of a whole childhood.

You are performing for an audience that can usually be named in one word, and a disappointment with no face on it has never once been a real person's opinion. The written word overturns a ranking system by name, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person look directly at whose voice they have been hearing.

And here is the thing about that audience, whoever it turns out to be.

They wanted you to be secure. That is what was underneath the definition. Nobody sat down and decided they wanted you to have a particular sort of title for its own sake. They wanted you to be alright.

And the work you have taken this week is the thing that makes you alright. Which means you are doing what they actually wanted by the route they did not think of.

You are doing the thing they were aiming at, and a route nobody in your family predicted has never once been a failure to arrive. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person see the intention underneath an old instruction, and 1 Corinthians 1:27 puts the chosen thing exactly where the ranking said it should not be.

Take it, and say it out loud

So the assignment, and the second half is the one that will do the work.

Take the shift, and tell one person plainly what you are doing and why. 1 Corinthians 1:27 says God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is standing there while a woman says what she has decided.

Tell somebody who knows about the frame in the hall. That is the point of the exercise. Not a stranger.

And say it without the explanation that is trying to get out. Without the part about how it is just for now, or how it is not related to what you studied, or how you are still looking for something else.

You are able to say it with no qualification behind it, and a plain sentence about honest work has never once needed a defense attached. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a woman a flat voice for her own situation, and the written word makes the low thing a deliberate choice rather than an apology.

And here is why the saying out loud matters more than the thinking about it.

The definition lives in silence. It survives on never being said in front of anybody. The first time you say what you are doing plainly, in a room, to a person, without flinching, it loses about half of what it had.

You are able to say it once in a room with another person in it, and a definition spoken out loud has never once come out of the conversation as strong as it went in. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in that sentence, and it is written in 1 Corinthians 1:27 that the choosing was made to confound the wise rather than to console the weak.