I Have Been Waiting For A Good Moment

You have been going to do this since about last October.

Not vaguely. Specifically. There is a thing you would like to start again and you have thought about it most weeks for eleven months, and you have not done it once.

And every time, the reason has been genuine. This week is too much. Everybody is tired. The oldest has that thing on. Wait until the school break is over. Wait until the exams. Wait until we are through this bit.

Each of those was true when you said it. Not one of them was an excuse. That is what makes this so hard to see from the inside.

But add them up. Eleven months of correct small waits, and at some point along the way the waiting stopped being preparation and quietly became the decision.

Nobody notices that changeover. There is no moment where a woman decides to not do a thing. There is only a long series of moments where she decides to do it later, and later is a place that does not exist.

I want to say something before the rest of it, because women who read an article like this one tend to arrive at self reproach faster than the article can stop them.

The waiting was not a character flaw. It was an attempt to give this the good conditions it deserved. That instinct is kind and it is the exact instinct that has cost you eleven months.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow

There is a line in Ecclesiastes that has been aimed at people like you for about three thousand years.

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

Read what it is not saying first, because that is where people go wrong with it.

It is not calling the farmer lazy. It is not calling him faithless. He is out in the field. He is watching the sky, which is a completely reasonable thing for a man with seed in his hand to be doing.

The verse is about a person who is genuinely trying to get the conditions right, and it says that person does not sow.

You are a woman who has been ready for eleven months, and waiting for the right evening has never once been the same thing as caring about it more. Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the failure on the watching rather than on the wanting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can show a woman that without laying a single thing on her.

Look at what follows in that chapter, as well, because the answer given is almost blunt.

The instruction that comes next is to sow in the morning and in the evening and not to know which will prosper. Not to wait for certainty. Not to identify the good day. To scatter it twice and let God run the weather.

You have permission to act without knowing how it goes, and an uncertain evening has never once been a reason to hold a good thing back. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a person out into a field on a day with cloud in it, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 11 that the one watching the sky is the one who ends up with nothing planted.

Which lands hard and then, oddly, lands as relief.

Because if there is no right evening, then there is no wrong one either, and the whole eleven month problem dissolves into the ordinary Tuesday in front of you.

You are free of a requirement that never came from God, and an ordinary week has never once been the wrong week to put something on a table. The Spirit of God is the one who lifts a standard nobody but a tired woman ever set, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 11 that the sowing comes before the knowing.

The good conditions are not coming

Now the practical half, and I will be plain about it.

The conditions that eleven months of waiting was aimed at do not exist, and they were never going to.

There is no week when everybody is rested and nothing is on and nobody has anything the following morning. That week has not occurred in your household in four years and it is not scheduled.

You are living in the only conditions there are, and a normal tired week has never once been a poor week for twenty minutes in one room. It is written in Ecclesiastes 11 that the one who regards the clouds does not reap, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a woman back the evening she is actually standing in.

And notice what the waiting has quietly done to the thing itself.

Eleven months of postponement has made it big. It has become an event that has to justify the wait, and now it needs to go well, and now it needs everybody, and now it needs a good week to happen in.

That is not what it was in October. In October it was twenty minutes at a table.

You have made this heavier than it was ever meant to be, and a thing that got postponed has never once needed to be excellent to be worth doing. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the weight out of an ordinary evening for a woman who has been carrying it since autumn, and Scripture puts the sowing before the certainty rather than after it.

So take it back to twenty minutes. That is the deflation and it is a mercy.

Do it in the wrong conditions

Here is the instruction, and it is deliberately contrary.

Do it tonight. On the worst evening of the week. In the wrong conditions.

Not the good Thursday. Not after the exams. Tonight, with everybody a bit tired and one of them out and the kitchen not done.

You are able to start something in poor weather, and a bad evening has never once been the wrong soil for a small thing. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in an ordinary tired Tuesday as much as in a good Saturday, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 says plainly that watching the sky is what stops the sowing.

There is a reason for choosing the worst evening rather than a decent one, and it matters.

If you start on a good evening, the good evening becomes part of the requirement, and next week you go looking for another one. If you start on a poor evening, the whole thing is proved cheap, and cheap is what makes something repeatable.

You have more to gain from a mediocre evening than from a good one, and something that works badly on a Tuesday has never once needed a Saturday to be real. It is written that a person is to sow and not know which shall prosper, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a woman brave enough to aim low on purpose.

And then let it be as ordinary as it is. Do not raise it. Do not mark the occasion.

You are allowed to let this be small, and eleven months of waiting have never once made an evening owe you anything. The Spirit of God is the one who does the growing while a person is only scattering, and Scripture in Ecclesiastes 11 refuses to name a right day.