I Rewrote The Message Eleven Times

There are eleven of them.

Maybe not eleven exactly. But there is a draft, and a version of the draft, and a version where you took out the part about being available, and a version where you put it back, and one you wrote at half past eleven at night that you deleted in the morning because it sounded desperate.

And not one of them has been sent.

I want to name what is happening, because it has been dressed up as care and it is not care.

Rewriting is a way of staying in the part of this that you can control. While the sentence is being improved, nothing has been risked. Nobody has said anything back. The whole thing is still, entirely, in your own hands.

You are not missing the right words, and a better sentence has never once been the thing standing between you and the sending.

And here is the part you already suspect, which is why this has gone on for two weeks.

There is no version of this message that guarantees a yes. There is no arrangement of words that removes the risk, because the risk is not in the words. The risk is in another person, and another person cannot be edited.

So the eleventh draft is exactly as risky as the first one, and it has cost you fourteen days.

I am not eloquent

There is an exchange at a burning bush where a man makes an argument about his own speech, and it is the same argument that has kept eleven drafts unsent.

And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. (Exodus 4:10, King James Version)

I am not eloquent. I am slow of speech.

That is a man saying the words will not come out right, which is exactly the objection sitting behind eleven drafts.

You are making an old argument and not a new one, and worrying about how it will come out has never once been a modern invention. Exodus 4:10 has a man saying I am slow of speech in front of God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that objection in the text rather than editing it out.

And look at the answer he gets. God does not improve his vocabulary. God does not give him a script.

The answer is about the mouth. Who hath made man's mouth. I will be with thy mouth.

You have been asking for better words and being offered something else entirely, and a mouth with God near it has never once needed a perfect sentence in it first. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a mouth rather than with a draft, and it is written in Exodus 4 that the answer moved past the wording altogether.

What a plain message actually looks like

Let me take the pressure off the wording by telling you what the person receiving it will actually do.

They will read it in about four seconds. They will not analyze it. They will have one of three reactions: yes, no, or not right now, and which one they have will be decided almost entirely by whether they happen to need the thing.

Your sentence structure will play no part in it. None.

You are polishing something that will be read in four seconds, and a carefully balanced paragraph has never once changed whether somebody needed a job done. The written word records a man's plain objection and a plain answer, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a thing simple when a person is making it complicated.

And here is what a plain one looks like, and I am giving you this shape rather than a script, because a script is a method and this site does not hand out methods.

Name the work. Say it is being taken on for people at the moment. Say you would be glad to do theirs. That is all three parts, and it fits in a message with room to spare.

No explanation of your circumstances. No apology at the front. No long paragraph at the end giving them an exit, which is the thing men like you always put in and which does more damage than anything else in the message.

You are able to send something short, and a message without an escape hatch built into it has never once been pushy. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person the nerve to leave a sentence standing, and Exodus 4:10 shows a man being answered without being handed a better speech.

The eleventh draft is the first draft

Now the hard sentence of this article, and then we will get to what you do tonight.

The first draft was good enough. It was good enough eleven drafts ago.

I am not saying that to make you feel foolish about the fourteen days. I am saying it because you already know it, and hearing somebody else say it is sometimes what makes a thing possible.

You are holding something that was ready two weeks ago, and time spent improving a thing that was finished has never once been the same as preparation. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a loop a person cannot end themselves, and the written word moves a man from his objection to his going in the same conversation.

And one more, because it is the real fear under the drafts.

If they say no, you have lost nothing that you had this morning. The month is the same. The skill is the same. The only thing that will have changed is that one person now knows what you do, which is more than they knew yesterday.

You are risking almost nothing and have been treating it as everything, and a no has never once taken a single thing out of a man's hands. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts the size of a thing back to its actual size, and it is written that a slow tongue was not a disqualification for being sent.