I Have Been Fixing This Since I Was Fourteen

There is a shelf in your bathroom, and you could not tell me what most of it cost.

You could tell me why each one is there. That one was for the thing along the jaw. That one was for the winter when it all went tight and flaking. That one somebody swore by. That one was the expensive attempt, the one you were slightly embarrassed about, and you finished it, and then you did not buy it again.

I am not going to name any of them and I am not going to tell you to throw them out. That is not the subject and it never has been.

The subject is that you have been running a repair operation on your own face since you were about fourteen years old, and you have never once stopped to ask what it is you think you are repairing.

Because there was a moment, and it was probably around then, when your skin stopped being a part of you and became a problem you were responsible for.

Somebody said something, or you read something, or you simply noticed a difference between your face and a face in a photograph. And after that, everything you did to your skin had a purpose attached to it, and the purpose was correction.

That is twenty five years of touching your own face with the intention of fixing it.

I want to say the honest thing here, because you are old enough for it and I am not going to pretend.

I do not know whether anything you do will change how your skin looks. Neither does anybody else, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something. Skin does what it does. It responds to weather and sleep and years and things nobody has mapped, and half of what happens on your face was decided before you were born.

What I do know is that there is a difference between washing your face because it is yours and washing your face because it is wrong, and you have not done the first one in a very long time.

The work of thy hand

There is a sentence in Isaiah that gets used about big things, nations and history, and it works just as well standing at a sink.

But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. (Isaiah 64:8, King James Version)

We all are the work of thy hand.

Now sit with the picture, because it is a specific one. Clay does not choose its color. Clay does not select its texture or decide where it is thin. Clay is not consulted, and clay is not at fault for how it turned out, and there is no version of that image where the clay is expected to improve itself before it is fit to be handled.

And the word used is work. Not draft. Not attempt. The finished thing that came off the wheel and was set down and was called done.

Which lands somewhere uncomfortable, and I want to name it plainly rather than let it sit there.

Every jar on that shelf was bought on the assumption that something needed correcting. Not maintaining. Correcting. And correction assumes a fault, and a fault assumes somebody got it wrong.

That is the thing under the twenty five years. Not vanity. A quiet standing verdict that what you were handed was a mistake, and that it is your job to keep it from showing.

It is the work of a hand that was not yours, and there has never once been a fault in it for you to be managing. Isaiah 64:8 calls the clay the work of the potter rather than a draft in need of correction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a twenty five year verdict off somebody.

Care and correction are not the same act

Here is the distinction the whole of this site rests on, and it is easy to say and hard to feel.

The same action can be either one. That is what makes it slippery.

Washing your face can be care. It can also be correction. From the outside they look identical: same sink, same water, same two minutes. What is different is what is happening inside the person doing it.

Care has no result attached. You do it because this is your body and bodies get tended. You are not checking afterward. There is no before and after. If nothing whatsoever changed, you would still do it tomorrow, because the point was never the change.

Correction is doing the same thing while waiting to see whether it worked. And correction always has a small dread in it, because it can fail, and when it fails the failure lands on you.

You can tell which one you are doing by one question: do you look afterward?

If you wash your face and then lean in to see whether anything is different, that was correction. If you wash your face and dry it and walk out of the room, that was care.

You are able to tend this body without waiting to see whether it worked, and care has never once been the same act as repair. The written word calls a person the work of God's hand rather than a task assigned to them, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates the tending from the fixing.

Wash your face slowly

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately the smallest thing on this whole site.

Wash your face slowly tonight, as care rather than as correction.

Not differently. Not with anything new. The same water and the same two minutes you were going to spend anyway.

Slowly is the only instruction, and it is doing real work. Speed is how a chore gets done, and you have been doing this as a chore since the nineties. Slowing it down makes it an act rather than a task, and you will notice within about fifteen seconds that your hands do not know how to do it slowly.

Then dry your face and leave the room.

Do not lean in. Do not check anything. Do not tilt toward the light to see whether the thing along your jaw is better or worse than yesterday. That is the whole discipline and it is harder than it sounds, because that look is automatic and has been for decades.

If you find yourself checking, that is fine and it is information rather than a failure. Notice it, and walk out anyway.

You are able to walk out of that room without looking, and the checking has never once been the part that did you any good. Isaiah 64:8 puts every person on the record as finished work rather than as an ongoing correction, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a woman at a sink at eleven at night.