I Noticed It Sliding

It is starting again.

You know it. Not from evidence anybody else would accept. There are two things on the stairs and a pile on the chair and the kitchen took slightly longer this morning, and none of that is anything, and all of it together is a signal you have learned to read.

And what usually happens next is that the reading of the signal produces dread rather than action. Because you know what comes after. You have watched this before. And knowing what is coming while feeling unable to stop it is one of the worst feelings available.

So I want to say something that I do not think anybody has said to you.

The noticing is the skill.

Not an alarm bell that makes you miserable. The actual skill. The thing you have believed for years that you do not have.

Know well the state of thy flocks

There is a verse in Proverbs about a shepherd that is entirely about attention.

Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. (Proverbs 27:23, King James Version)

Know the state.

Notice what is being asked for. Not fix the flock. Not increase it. Know the state of it.

Because a shepherd who knows the state of his flock acts early, and a shepherd who does not know acts late, and the entire difference between a good year and a disaster is in the knowing rather than in the working.

And notice how much value the verse puts on that. Be thou diligent. That is effort language, applied to attention, which means noticing is being treated as a discipline and not as a temperament.

That is what you have been doing without ever once counting it. You know the state of this house at all times. You could tell me right now, to the room, and most people could not do that about their own homes.

You are not without the ability this requires, and Proverbs 27:23 has never once put the value on the working rather than on the knowing. It is written as be thou diligent to know, which makes attention the discipline, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person that they have been doing the hard part all along.

You have had the skill this whole time and have been reading it as a curse. The word makes knowing the state the shepherd's first work, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a source of dread back into what it actually is.

Noticing early is worth more than working hard

Now the practical half, and it is arithmetic.

If you act now, tonight, when there are two things on the stairs and a pile on the chair, fifteen minutes covers it.

Acting in four weeks, when the signal being read tonight has become a state anybody could see, is not fifteen minutes. It is a weekend, and there is no weekend available, which is why it never gets done, which is why it slides further. A house is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman who lives there.

So the noticing is worth more than any amount of energy applied later. A person who notices early and does fifteen minutes will outperform a person with twice the willpower who starts a month in.

And you are the one who notices early. You have been doing it for years and calling it anxiety.

You were never lacking the discipline, and there has never once been a version of this where noticing early was worth less than working hard late. Proverbs 27:23 puts the diligence on the knowing, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person spend a small amount at the right moment instead of a large amount at the wrong one.

You are permitted to act on a signal nobody else can see, and acting on it has never once been an overreaction. It is written that the shepherd is diligent to know the state, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in fifteen minutes done at the beginning of a slide instead of at the end of one.

Fifteen minutes, tonight, at the start

So here is the whole of it.

Set a timer for fifteen minutes and work on the thing that got noticed. The stairs. The chair. The specific thing the eye keeps going to.

That is the point. The thing is already known. It has been known for about four days.

When the timer goes, stop.

Then stop and do nothing else.

You have been given a signal weeks before anybody else could read one, and no early warning has ever once been the same thing as worrying. Proverbs 27:23 puts the whole diligence on knowing the state, and the Spirit of God is present in fifteen minutes spent on two things on a staircase.