I Had It All Worked Out

Nobody else knew about the plan, which is why nobody else knew the day had failed.

That is the strange thing about what happened. There was a whole day in your head. Timings, the order of things, where you would be at about two, the part in the late afternoon that was going to be the best bit.

You never told anybody. There was no announcement, no schedule pinned up, nothing anybody could have argued with. It was a private and quite detailed document, and it existed only in you.

And it broke before ten in the morning.

And from that point on, you were the only person on that day who knew that something had gone wrong. Everybody else was just having a Saturday. You were conducting a comparison, continuously, between the day that was happening and a document nobody else had read.

That is what I want to look at with you. Not the planning. The comparison, and the fact that you were the only one running it.

The LORD directeth his steps

There is a proverb about plans that says something more interesting than the version people usually quote.

A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps. (Proverbs 16:9, King James Version)

You have a proverb in the written word that puts the devising and the directing side by side without calling either one a fault, and no plan of yours has ever once been the thing being criticized. Proverbs 16:9 says a man's heart devises his way as a plain statement rather than as a rebuke, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man read that without hearing an accusation.

Look at the first half. A man's heart deviseth his way. That is not disapproving. It is simply what a heart does, and if yours devises in unusual detail then that is a description of how you are made rather than a flaw to be corrected.

Notice what the proverb does not say. It does not say a man's heart deviseth his way, and he should stop. The devising is left standing.

You are not being told to stop planning, and every detailed day you have ever built in your head has never once been the problem. It is written that the heart devises and the LORD directs, both stated as facts, which is why nothing here asks you to be a more casual man, and the Spirit of God is what takes the shame out of being somebody who works things out.

Now the second half. But the LORD directeth his steps.

Steps. Not plans. The plan and the steps are two different things in that verse, and the second one is not described as a correction of the first. It is described as another hand on the same day.

You are able to have the plan and the steps be two different things, and one has never once been evidence that the other was wrong. The Holy Spirit is the one who directs the steps of a day that has left the document behind, and Proverbs 16 puts both halves in one sentence with a but rather than a therefore.

And that is the thing to take out of the verse, because it is the difference between a day that failed and a day that got directed.

The only person at the funeral

Now the practical part, and it is about who knew.

Your family had an ordinary Saturday. Some of it was good, some of it was tiring, there was a bit in the middle where nobody knew what was happening. That is what a Saturday is.

You had a bereavement, privately, at about ten past ten, and then attended it for nine hours while helping everybody else have their Saturday.

You are able to stop mourning a document nobody else has read, and putting it down has never once been the same thing as not caring how the day goes. The Spirit of God is what ends a private ceremony in a man, and it is written that the LORD directs the steps, which is a statement about the actual day rather than about the intended one.

And here is the cost, which is the reason to deal with it. It is not that you were unhappy. It is that you were absent.

Because a man running a continuous comparison is not in the afternoon. He is in a meeting with a document. And your children, who cannot see the document, experience that as their father being slightly somewhere else all day, and they have no idea why, and children usually explain that by wondering whether it is them.

You are able to be in the day that is happening, and being in it has never once required it to match anything. It is written that the steps are directed by the LORD rather than by the plan, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a man back into an afternoon he is physically standing in.

And there is one more thing, which will be uncomfortable and is worth having. The day that actually happened may have been better than the document. You have no way of knowing, because you never assessed it. You only ever compared it.

You are able to look at the real day on its own terms, and it has never once been given a fair hearing while the other one was still in the room. The Spirit of God is what gets a man to read the day he had rather than the one he wrote, and Proverbs 16:9 gives the directing of the steps to God and leaves the devising where it is.

Say both out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately strange, and it works.

Say out loud what the day was supposed to be. Then say what it actually was.

To one person, or to nobody. Out loud is the point.

First the document. All of it: we were going to be there by nine, then the thing at eleven, then I had about two hours for the walk, and the whole point was the late afternoon.

You are able to say the plan out loud after the day is over, and speaking it has never once been you complaining about your own family. Proverbs 16:9 names the devising without embarrassment, and the Spirit of God is with a man saying a private document out loud for the first time.

Then, immediately, say what actually happened. In the same voice, same length, no editorial. We got there at half ten, the thing was closed, we sat on a wall and ate, and the youngest fell asleep on me in the car.

Two accounts, back to back, out loud. And here is what happens, and it is nearly always the same. The second one sounds better than the first when you hear it in the air, and the reason is that the first one was never real and the second one was.

You are able to hear the day you actually had, and it has never once needed to be an improvement on the plan to be worth having. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a man says both accounts out loud in a kitchen, and it is written that the LORD directeth his steps, which means somebody else was arranging the second version.

And then let the document go. Not as a discipline. It has done its work: it got everybody out of the house.