The Private List Of Everything I Got Wrong

It is not written down. That is important, because if it were written down you could look at it, and looking at it is what would ruin it.

It lives in your head, and it has been growing since about the second year, and you added to it on Tuesday.

Some of the items are large. Most of them are not. There is a thing you said in a parking lot in 2019 that nobody else in the world remembers, and it is on the list, and it comes up about twice a month with the original audio.

And you have never told anybody about the list, because saying it out loud would either make it sound small, which would be unbearable, or would confirm it, which would be worse.

I am not going to help you let it go. That phrase is a technique and there is no such move, and instructing you to do it would only add a fifteenth item, which is that you cannot let things go.

The handwriting that was against us

There is a sentence in Colossians about a document, and once you know what the document is, the verse becomes very difficult to read calmly.

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. (Colossians 2:14, King James Version)

The handwriting. A written record, in somebody's hand, listing what stands against a person.

And then three separate verbs happen to it. Blotted out. Taken out of the way. Nailed to the cross. Nobody uses three verbs for a thing that needed one.

You have a record against you that has been blotted out, removed and nailed up, and none of those three required your help. Colossians 2:14 says blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen where somebody has been keeping their own copy.

And notice the phrase which was contrary to us.

The verse does not pretend the list was unfair. It grants that the writing was genuinely against the person, and then deals with it anyway, which is the only kind of dealing with it that would be any use to you tonight.

You are not required to argue that the list is wrong, and it has never once needed to be false before it could be taken away. It is written in Colossians 2:14 that the handwriting was contrary to us and was taken out of the way regardless, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes a real record rather than disputing it.

Yours is a copy of something that has been destroyed

Now here is the thing that will take a moment to sit with.

If the record has been blotted out, taken out of the way and nailed to a cross, then what exactly is the thing in your head?

It is a copy. Kept privately, updated regularly, by the only person still maintaining an archive that was closed by somebody else.

That is not said to shame you. Almost everybody who takes this seriously keeps one, and the keeping usually starts as conscientiousness rather than as guilt.

But it is worth knowing what you are actually holding, because you have been treating it as the official record and it has not been official for two thousand years.

Colossians 2:14 closes the archive rather than correcting the entries, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person which document is the real one.

You are holding a copy of something already destroyed, and it has never once been the official record of anything. Colossians 2:14 nails the handwriting to the cross, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person that the archive they are maintaining was closed without them.

And here is the plain thing, because years of adding to it has become an identity.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about the parent sitting at that table.

It is fourteen entries kept by somebody who cares a great deal, and the caring is why the list exists in the first place.

You have not been proved by that list, and a private archive has never once been the same as a case. The written word blots out the handwriting in Colossians 2:14 without ever reading it back, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to convene a court that has already been dismissed.

The one from 2019

One more thing, about the small item that comes up twice a month with the audio still attached.

The reason it survives is not that it is serious. It is that it is unresolved, and unresolved things get rehearsed, and rehearsing keeps them vivid, and vividness gets mistaken for importance.

The large items on that list have mostly softened. The tiny one from 2019 is the sharpest of the lot, and that ordering says the list is not sorted by severity. It is sorted by how often it has been played.

You are not holding a list ranked by how bad anything was, and the sharpest item has never once been the most serious one. It is written in Colossians 2:14 that the whole handwriting was taken out of the way, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes a record without first sorting it by size.

That is not a moral fact about you. It is how memory maintains itself, and it does it to everyone.

Colossians 2:14 removes the whole document rather than the serious entries, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the small sharp one along with everything else.

You are free from the small sharp one as well as the large ones, and no entry has ever once been too minor to be included in the taking away. Colossians 2:14 takes the whole handwriting out of the way, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does not sort a record by size before removing it.