I Buy The Person I Mean To Be

If you laid those eleven books out on the bed, they would describe a woman, and you have never met her.

She reads history. She is interested in a period she could not currently name three facts about. She is halfway into something demanding and she is enjoying it. She has opinions.

And she is not you, and the distance between her and you is the exact reason none of those books get opened, because opening one means meeting the gap.

That is what the pile is. It is not a backlog. It is a portrait of somebody you intended to become, assembled one book at a time over about four years, and it is sitting nine inches from where you sleep.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what a woman ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it adds one more thing to be behind on.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the portrait, because the portrait is not the problem and neither is the buying.

The problem is that the pile got read as a measurement of a gap, and it was only ever a record of a hope.

We are his workmanship

There is a sentence in Ephesians 2 about what a person is, and the grammar of it settles something about gaps.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10, King James Version)

Look at the tense of the making.

We are his workmanship. Present, settled, complete. Not becoming his workmanship. Not on the way to being made. The making is described as a finished fact about people who have not yet walked into the works.

And then look at the works themselves. God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. The works are prepared in advance and laid out ahead, and the walking happens afterward.

So the sequence is this: made first, then walk. The identity is not the reward at the end of the walking. It is what the walking is done out of.

You are already the workmanship with the walking still ahead of you, and eleven unopened books have never once measured a distance between you and yourself. Ephesians 2:10 puts the making in the finished tense and the walking in the future one, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a nightstand nine inches from a pillow.

There is one more thing in it worth having.

His workmanship. Not your project. The woman in that portrait is not something you are supposed to manufacture out of correct choices; if she is real at all, she is His work, and the works were laid out before you arrived at them.

You have a making that is His and already done, and a version of yourself you have not met has never once been a thing you had to assemble. It is written we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, the ordaining came before the walking, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The pile is a record of hope, filed as a deficit

Here is the mechanism, and it is entirely an act of interpretation.

Every one of those books was bought in a good moment.

That is worth sitting with. Nobody buys a book in despair. Each one happened in a moment of appetite, curiosity, wanting to know something. Eleven separate moments of reaching out, over four years, all of them alive.

And the pile is the record of those eleven moments. That is what it actually is. Physically, factually, it is a stack of evidence that a woman kept reaching.

But it got filed differently. It got filed as a list of things not done, and once it is a list of things not done it becomes a measurement, and a measurement of a gap is an unbearable object to keep beside a bed.

Same eleven books. Two completely different readings, and only one of them is supported by how they got there.

You are looking at eleven moments of reaching and calling it a deficit, and a book bought in hope has never once become a debt by sitting still. Ephesians 2:10 has the making settled and the works waiting rather than owed, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who reads her own appetite as a failure.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one that keeps her unreachable.

If the portrait is a target, then opening one of those books is an audition. You would be finding out whether you can be her, tonight, on a Tuesday, tired. And nobody auditions at half past nine.

Whereas if the making is already done and the works are laid out ahead, then opening one is not an audition. It is a walk, and a walk can be started badly.

You have a walk to take and not an audition to pass, and ten pages tonight have never once been a test of whether you can become somebody. The written word puts the workmanship in the finished tense and the walking in front of it, and His Spirit is the one who takes a target and turns it back into a road.

One off the pile, where you actually sit

So here is the assignment, and it is smaller than the portrait by design.

Take one off the pile tonight and put it somewhere you will actually sit.

One. Not the most impressive one and not the one that most belongs to her. Whichever comes to hand, and it can be the least demanding thing on the stack.

And nobody is suggesting you reduce the pile. Not tonight, not ever. It stays exactly the size it is, because it is a record of eleven live moments and there is nothing in it to apologize for.

Then put it where you sit. The chair you use, the counter you lean on, the arm of the couch.

You are already the workmanship with the walking still ahead, and eleven unopened books have never once measured a distance. The Holy Spirit is the one at that bedside with you, and Ephesians 2:10 puts the making in the finished tense and the good works out in front of it.

Here is why one and why moved rather than read.

While the eleven are a portrait, no single one can be picked up, because touching any of them means engaging the whole gap. Removing one breaks the portrait back into books, and one book on a chair arm is not a version of anybody. It is a book.

And the least demanding one on purpose, because the assignment tonight is not to meet her. It is to walk four feet.

You are able to take one book out of a portrait, and the easiest one on the stack has never once been a smaller act than the hardest. Ephesians 2:10 says for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman carrying one book to a chair.

Read ten pages of it if you feel like it. Not required, and not the point. If it only gets moved, tonight worked exactly as designed.

You have a portrait that was always a record of hope, and four years of reaching out have never once added up to an accusation. It is written which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them, the works are prepared and waiting rather than demanded, and the Spirit of God is saying it over a stack tonight.