Typos (And Other Redeemable Things)

What an engaging title (he says sarcastically).

This post is more for me than anything else. In fact, this is mostly stream of consciousness. I tend to have the kind of personality and thought process where instead of standing by the old phrase “measure twice, cut once”, for me it tends to be, “measure twice, still seems a little off, measure again, draw where you’re going to cut, prepare the saw, now that I think about it I don’t love the wood, get a new piece, measure three times, mark up the wood, prepare the saw again, and now think about maybe cutting.”

This is how my brain tackles ideas.

I tend to chew and meditate on an idea for a long period of time, to the point that I can sometimes miss the window for action in my pursuit for perfection. I begin to get so critical of what I put down on paper that I become my own worst enemy in my attempts to get something done. The inclination to “get it right the first time” becomes an idol to some degree, and I sacrifice my effort to that idol.

I started blogging in an attempt to give myself permission to try out ideas with the knowledge that I’d get it wrong. It’s the craft of writing that I sought to improve. But then, as I life filled up, COVID was in full force, and I felt I didn’t have sufficient time to develop ideas and posts, I began to measure more than twice. I began to measure and measure until my opportunity to build the house would vanish.

But we need to cut at some point. There comes a point when all the preparation brings us to a point of action and we must proceed, trusting that we will do what needs to be done as we’re there. And we also need to trust that if our response isn’t perfect, life will go on. There is a weird pressure to get each post perfect and that comes from a good place most of the time. Like I said, I started this blog to work on my craft of writing, and with that comes the process of writing, some editing, bouncing ideas off of trusted people, and releasing a final product. But when it becomes public record, when it is given out into the wild, it lives in a vulnerable state. What if I’m wrong about what I wrote down and shared?

It is amazing how much grace we can give yet not receive. Actually, it’s amazing how much grace we grant to others and never give grace to ourselves. We can give grace for the faults of others fairly easily. We forget that we too are processes, still sorting ourselves out. We are all a process after all.

Jesus seems quite fine sitting with people in their process. The story of the road to Emmaus sticks out to me. Jesus could have easily just walked up to these two disciples and simply revealed himself to them, open their eyes, some kind of miraculous display. Yet he doesn’t. Instead, he sits with them in the process. As he begins to walk with them, he offers good questions to them that cause them to recount all that they had experienced. As Jesus explained how what happened to him was a fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures, there was a dialogue and a sitting in the process with these disciples. Because even as he explained all of these, they didn’t realize who was in their midst until Jesus broke the bread.

Perhaps the most accommodating picture of Jesus is in John 21 as Jesus speaks with Peter. Peter had denied knowing Jesus after Jesus told Peter what would happen. Even knowing what Jesus said, Peter made typos (to put it mildly). Even after all of that, Jesus sat with him in Peter’s process. And Peter was still entrusted with a lot! After the mistakes and false assumptions, after misunderstandings about Jesus, Peter made all these mistakes and Jesus still sits with him in the process. Jesus had a trust in Peter that Peter probably didn’t have for himself.

A wise man once told me “The Spirit has more faith in you than you do in yourself”. I find that remarkable.

I hit this point recently in realizing that if I continue to work ideas and never actually put something out, growth will happen slower. Part of the process of life is mistakes, only the arrogant person misses the mistakes that they make. Another wise friend once told me “Wisdom is just scars”. Life will present us opportunities to evaluate and learn and grow in wisdom, but it will require action and trust that what is broken can be fixed. The deeper truth in here is that, for those who hold to the kingship of Jesus, we believe that everything is redeemable. If someone breaks and arm, we can put a cast on it. If someone’s feelings get hurt, we can say we’re sorry. If we’re wrong about something, we can repent (turn to a new way of thinking) and move on. If Jesus gives the space and grace to make mistakes, then we have permission to be wrong about stuff sometimes. In the immortal words of Michael Scott quoting Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

So this is the post, warts and all, basically raw and unedited and stream of consciousness. Because if I don’t post something, I will have missed the action. And if I don’t move, then I can’t learn from the attempt. I suppose in a weird way, this post is an ode to the “redeemability” of ideas, the redemptive act of repentance. We are all indeed a process and that’s okay. If Jesus heard us deny him, chances are good that he’ll come by later and cook us breakfast and talk to us about it.