The Email I Rewrote Eleven Times
I counted the drafts folder before I finally hit send last night. Eleven versions of the same four paragraphs to a client who was only asking me to confirm a delivery date, something I could have answered in one sentence at nine in the morning. Instead I rewrote the opening line four separate times, deleted an exclamation point and put it back twice, and read the whole thing out loud in an empty kitchen to make sure no sentence could possibly be misread as careless. By the time I sent it, it was almost midnight, and the actual content had not changed since draft two.
I used to think this kind of obsessing was just thoroughness, the good kind of care a responsible man brings to his work. Some of it is. But if I am honest with myself, most of what kept me circling that email for three hours was not a desire to serve my client well. It was fear, dressed up in a collared shirt and calling itself diligence. Fear that one clumsy sentence would confirm what some part of me still believes underneath all the sober years, that I am one mistake away from proving I cannot be trusted with anything important. I spent so many years actually being unreliable that some wounded corner of my mind decided the only safe way forward was to never again risk being anything less than flawless, as if perfection could out run the memory of everything I once let fall apart.
Solomon warned about exactly this kind of striving, and it surprised me the first time I read it, because I expected Scripture to praise diligence without limit. "Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself?" (Ecclesiastes 7:16, NKJV). Destroy is a strong word for rewriting an email, but it named the shape of what those three hours actually cost me. Time with my family. An evening I will not get back. A kind of peace I kept promising myself was one more edit away and never once arrived, because the target was never really the sentence. The target kept moving because it was never really about the sentence at all.
Paul asked himself a question that cut closer to the root of my problem than I wanted it to. "For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10, NKJV). I would never have called what I was doing people pleasing. I called it professionalism. But underneath eleven drafts sat the same old hunger to be seen as competent, capable, finally good enough, and that hunger was aimed almost entirely at how a man I barely know would read four short paragraphs, not at whether I had honestly served him well.
God told Samuel something once that I keep having to relearn in smaller rooms than a throne room. "The LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7, NKJV). I had polished the outward appearance of that email past the point of usefulness while never once asking whether my heart toward that client was honest and willing. He was never grading my grammar. He was watching whether I would trust Him enough to send something imperfect and let it be enough.
This is where my own reasoning ran completely out of road. I could tell myself all night that the email was fine, that nobody rewrites an exclamation point eleven times and stays sane, and none of that talking ever once loosened the knot in my chest. Paul explains why plainly. "For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6, NKJV). My flesh was doing exactly what flesh does when it is frightened, working harder and harder at a fix flesh was never equipped to produce. Jesus said something almost identical to a crowd chasing bread instead of Him. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing" (John 6:63, NKJV). All that polishing profited nothing. It could not manufacture the one thing I actually needed, which was rest.
What finally moved my hand toward send was not a twelfth draft. It was remembering a promise that never once depended on my execution being spotless. "Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6, NKJV). He is finishing the work. Not my inbox. Me. And He is not waiting on a flawless paragraph to keep His word.
I sat still for a minute before I hit send, longer than I have sat still in weeks. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10, NKJV) is not advice for people with nothing to do. It is advice for people like me who cannot stop doing long enough to be met. God is alive tonight, and He already knows every draft you are still rewriting in some empty kitchen of your own. He has a plan for you that was never waiting on your perfect sentence to move forward, and He will never leave you to earn His approval one more edit at a time.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 7:16; Galatians 1:10; 1 Samuel 16:7; Romans 8:6; John 6:63; Philippians 1:6; Psalm 46:10.
I used to think this kind of obsessing was just thoroughness, the good kind of care a responsible man brings to his work. Some of it is. But if I am honest with myself, most of what kept me circling that email for three hours was not a desire to serve my client well. It was fear, dressed up in a collared shirt and calling itself diligence. Fear that one clumsy sentence would confirm what some part of me still believes underneath all the sober years, that I am one mistake away from proving I cannot be trusted with anything important. I spent so many years actually being unreliable that some wounded corner of my mind decided the only safe way forward was to never again risk being anything less than flawless, as if perfection could out run the memory of everything I once let fall apart.
Solomon warned about exactly this kind of striving, and it surprised me the first time I read it, because I expected Scripture to praise diligence without limit. "Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself?" (Ecclesiastes 7:16, NKJV). Destroy is a strong word for rewriting an email, but it named the shape of what those three hours actually cost me. Time with my family. An evening I will not get back. A kind of peace I kept promising myself was one more edit away and never once arrived, because the target was never really the sentence. The target kept moving because it was never really about the sentence at all.
Paul asked himself a question that cut closer to the root of my problem than I wanted it to. "For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10, NKJV). I would never have called what I was doing people pleasing. I called it professionalism. But underneath eleven drafts sat the same old hunger to be seen as competent, capable, finally good enough, and that hunger was aimed almost entirely at how a man I barely know would read four short paragraphs, not at whether I had honestly served him well.
God told Samuel something once that I keep having to relearn in smaller rooms than a throne room. "The LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7, NKJV). I had polished the outward appearance of that email past the point of usefulness while never once asking whether my heart toward that client was honest and willing. He was never grading my grammar. He was watching whether I would trust Him enough to send something imperfect and let it be enough.
This is where my own reasoning ran completely out of road. I could tell myself all night that the email was fine, that nobody rewrites an exclamation point eleven times and stays sane, and none of that talking ever once loosened the knot in my chest. Paul explains why plainly. "For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6, NKJV). My flesh was doing exactly what flesh does when it is frightened, working harder and harder at a fix flesh was never equipped to produce. Jesus said something almost identical to a crowd chasing bread instead of Him. "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing" (John 6:63, NKJV). All that polishing profited nothing. It could not manufacture the one thing I actually needed, which was rest.
What finally moved my hand toward send was not a twelfth draft. It was remembering a promise that never once depended on my execution being spotless. "Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6, NKJV). He is finishing the work. Not my inbox. Me. And He is not waiting on a flawless paragraph to keep His word.
I sat still for a minute before I hit send, longer than I have sat still in weeks. "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10, NKJV) is not advice for people with nothing to do. It is advice for people like me who cannot stop doing long enough to be met. God is alive tonight, and He already knows every draft you are still rewriting in some empty kitchen of your own. He has a plan for you that was never waiting on your perfect sentence to move forward, and He will never leave you to earn His approval one more edit at a time.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 7:16; Galatians 1:10; 1 Samuel 16:7; Romans 8:6; John 6:63; Philippians 1:6; Psalm 46:10.
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