I Wash My Face Like An Accusation

Two minutes, every night, for about eighteen years.

Nobody has ever seen it. There is no reason anybody would. It is a woman at a sink doing an entirely ordinary thing, and if you filmed it and showed it to somebody they would see nothing at all worth remarking on.

But you know what is actually going on in those two minutes, and it is not washing.

It is a small nightly correction being applied to a fault. That is the job. The hands move the way hands move, but underneath them there is a woman putting right something she has decided is wrong, and every night she has to do it again because it does not stay put right.

And it is faintly punitive, if you are honest about it. There is a bit of scrubbing in it. There is a going back over one area. There is a small satisfaction in the doing that has nothing to do with feeling clean and everything to do with feeling like something has been dealt with.

I want to say something that I think will land, and then I want to spend the rest of this on it.

The method is not the problem. There is nothing here about what you use or how you use it, and there will not be.

The intention is the problem, and the intention is the only thing in that bathroom that can change tonight.

Same water, different job

Two women can stand at the same sink, at the same hour, doing exactly the same movements, and be doing two entirely different things.

The first is correcting. There is a fault, the fault is hers, and this is the nightly maintenance that keeps it from getting worse. The measure of success is whether the fault seems smaller. The feeling at the end is relief that lasts about as long as it takes to turn the light off.

The second is tending. There is a body, the body has been out in the world all day, and this is what you do for a body at the end of a day. The measure of success is that it happened. The feeling at the end is that a thing was looked after.

You are somebody a whole day happened to, and a body at the end of one has never once needed to answer for itself. It is written in John 13 that He began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them, and the Spirit of God is what turns an ordinary sink into tending.

Same water. Same two minutes. Same hands and the same face.

You are doing one of those two jobs and it has never once been decided by the method, and the water has never once known which one it was. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman which job her own hands have been doing, and John 13 has somebody washing in a way nobody in that room could account for.

And here is what makes the first job so tiring.

Correction never ends. A fault that gets corrected nightly is a fault that returns nightly, which means the job has no completion in it anywhere. Eighteen years of that is six and a half thousand corrections, and not one of them finished anything.

Tending does end. That is what makes it different. You tend a thing and then it is tended, and you stop, and you go to bed.

You are able to do something tonight that actually finishes, and correction has never once been able to reach an end. Scripture in John 13 records a washing that was completed and then set down, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves a pair of hands from correcting to tending.

He began to wash

On the last night, before anything else happened, Jesus did a thing that stopped the room.

After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. (John 13:5, King James Version)

Read what that washing was and was not.

It was not hygiene instruction. Nobody in that room learned a technique. He did not tell them they had been doing it wrong, and He did not point out the state of anybody's feet, though the state of them would have been considerable.

There is no correction anywhere in that passage. There is a basin, a towel, and somebody kneeling down and doing a thing for a body that had been out on a road all day.

You are shown a washing with no accusation anywhere in it, and there has never once been a version of that night where He pointed out what was wrong. It is written in John 13 that He poured water into a basin and began to wash, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman see what her own hands could be doing instead.

And look at the towel.

Wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. He dried them. That is the part that is not strictly necessary and it is the part that tells you what kind of act it was.

Washing gets the dirt off. Drying is comfort. Drying is somebody attending to how a body will feel afterward, which is not required and which is exactly what care adds on top of function.

You are permitted to add the part that is not strictly necessary, and comfort has never once been an extravagance in that room. The Spirit of God is what puts the towel back into a woman's two minutes, and the written word says He wiped them with the towel wherewith He was girded.

Two minutes, the other way

So here is the assignment, and there is nothing new in it at all.

Tonight, wash your face the way somebody would wash it for you if they loved you.

Same water. Same everything. The only change is which of the two jobs is running at that sink.

Three things will follow from it on their own, and I will name them so you know what to expect.

It will be slower. Care is slower than correction, always, because correction is trying to finish and care is not in a hurry.

You are allowed to be slow at this, and hurry has never once been a sign that a thing was being cared for. John 13 shows Him taking a towel and washing feet without rushing through it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the clock out of a woman's hands.

You will not go back over the one area. That going back is the correction, and it is the easiest tell there is.

And you will dry properly instead of quickly. That is the towel, and it takes eight seconds, and it is the difference between a job done and a body attended to.

Then turn the light off and go to bed without checking anything, because a woman who has tended something does not stay behind to inspect it.

You are able to finish and leave the room, and there has never once been anything at that sink requiring your review afterward. The written word in John 13 shows a washing done and a towel used and the room moved on, and the Holy Spirit is what turns eighteen years of correction into care in a single night.