I Signed It To Prove Something

You worked it out in the summer.

Nobody told you. Nobody asked. You were driving and something arrived fully formed, the way these things do, and by the time you got where you were going you knew.

You did not sign it for the reasons you have been giving.

Some of the reasons were true. The work is good work and you are good at it and you wanted your own thing to be responsible for. All of that stands.

But underneath there was a person, and you were answering them.

You know which person. There is no need to write it down anywhere. It might be somebody dead. It might be somebody who thinks about you once a year. It might be a room full of people who said something in one afternoon eleven years ago.

Whoever it is, you have known since June, and here is the trouble.

You cannot decide whether knowing it helps.

Some days it is a relief, because it explains a restlessness you have carried since you were twenty-two.

And some days it makes the whole thing worse, because now the obligation is not just heavy. Now it is heavy and it was signed for a reason you are not proud of.

I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this that becomes a woman being told off in her own kitchen, and that is not what this is.

Nobody is asking you how you got here. That question does not belong in this and it is not going to be asked.

What is worth doing is dealing with the voice, because the voice is not in the past. It is still in the room.

Do I seek to please men

Paul asks a question about himself in public and does not soften it.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, King James Version)

He asks it as a live question, in the present tense, about himself.

Not: I used to do that and I have finished with it. Do I now. Am I doing it currently.

You are asking exactly the question Paul asked about himself, and Galatians 1:10 puts it in the present tense rather than as a confession about the past. The Holy Spirit is the one who raised it in you on a drive in June, and He raised it the same way He raised it in Paul.

That matters, because you have been treating your discovery as an indictment and Paul treats his as ordinary maintenance.

A person checks whose approval they are working for. That is a thing to do periodically, like checking a roof. It is not a verdict on the house.

You have been running a normal check and calling it a confession, and it is written as a live question rather than as a charge. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps that question live in people He is working with, and Galatians 1 shows it in the mouth of the man who wrote half the letters.

Now the second half of the verse, which is the freeing part.

If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. He does not say a person who has ever sought approval is disqualified. He says the two things cannot be the current master at the same time.

It is about who has the seat, not about who has ever been in the room.

You are not disqualified by having had a voice in the room, and Scripture puts the question on who holds the seat now. The Holy Spirit is the one who settles that in a person, and Galatians 1:10 is where the seat is named.

The voice and the paperwork are separate

Let me separate two things that have been welded together since June, because they are separate and the welding is doing the damage.

The obligation is a fact. It has a figure and a term and it will be there in the morning regardless of anything discovered on any drive.

The voice is a different object entirely. It is a person's approval that has been getting worked for, and it lives in the present, not in the afternoon you signed.

Here is how you know it is still live: think about the last good month. Who did you imagine telling.

You have a voice operating in the present rather than a mistake sitting in the past, and it is written as do I now rather than did I once. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a person which of the two they are actually dealing with.

And this is the good news in it, and it is substantial.

You cannot go back and unsign anything. That door is closed and no article should pretend otherwise.

But the voice can be dealt with today, in about thirty seconds, and dealing with it changes what the next eleven years feel like inside the same paperwork.

You are able to change the whole texture of this without one thing about the agreement changing, and the written word puts the freedom in whose approval is being sought. The Holy Spirit is the one who does that work, and Galatians 1 is where the door is.

And one plain thing, because this row is the heaviest on this site. If the weight has taken your nights somewhere dark, and thoughts about not being here have started arriving, that is not something to carry silently. Call or text 988, the crisis line, tonight, and tell one real person: a doctor, a pastor you trust, somebody who can sit with you. And if what is needed is a clear picture of the numbers, take it to somebody qualified to read them.

You have never been meant to be the only one who knows how heavy it has got, and Scripture asks whose approval a person is under rather than how they arrived. The Spirit of God is the one who goes with a woman into that call, and Galatians 1:10 never once asks her how she got here.

Name it out loud and step out from under

So here is the thing to do and it takes about thirty seconds.

Say out loud whose approval was being answered. Use the actual name. Say it in an ordinary voice, on your own, where nobody can hear.

Then say plainly: I am not answering that any more.

You are stepping out from under something rather than apologizing for it, and Galatians 1:10 asks do I now seek to please men rather than did I ever. The Spirit of God is the one who receives that, and He is not disappointed by the name that comes out.

The reason it has to be a name is that a general resolution about not needing approval does nothing. It is too big to act on and it evaporates by Thursday.

A name is specific. And the strange thing about a named voice is that it gets much smaller the moment it is said out loud by a grown woman in her own house.

You have been under something that shrinks when it is named, and the written word puts the whole matter in the present tense where a person can act. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the shrinking, and Galatians 1:10 is the instrument.

Then go and open in the morning and run the same building, and the obligation is exactly what it was, and you are not carrying it for the same reason any more.