I Started Doing This After She Died

You did not decide to.

That is the part you keep coming back to. There was no evening where you thought about taking something up. You were in the house, and at some point your hands were doing something, and it has carried on since.

And you have not told many people, and the ones you have told got a shortened version, because the full version sounds strange when you say it out loud. I started making things after she died. I do not know why. I am not particularly enjoying it.

I want to say at the start that I am not going to explain it to you.

There is a lot of writing that would tell you what this means. That it is processing. That it is a healthy outlet. That making is how the body grieves when words run out. Some of that might even be true, and I am still not going to say it, because the moment somebody hands you a meaning for what your hands are doing, the thing stops being yours and becomes an exercise you are performing correctly or incorrectly.

You have enough things to do correctly at the moment.

What I will say is smaller and I think it is more useful. Your hands are allowed to be doing this. They do not need a reason and they do not need your permission and they are not doing it instead of something else you should be doing.

Pour out your heart before him

There is a line in the psalms about what to do with what is inside you, and the verb is the useful part.

Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah. (Psalm 62:8, King James Version)

Pour out your heart before him.

Pour out is a physical word. It is what you do with a jug. It is not explain, it is not articulate, it is not present in an orderly fashion. You tip the thing over and what is in it comes out, in whatever order it comes out in, and the shape it lands in is not your responsibility.

And notice where it goes. Before Him. Not to Him, exactly, in the sense of a speech delivered. Before Him, in His presence, in front of somebody who is there.

That is closer to what your hands have been doing than any explanation I could offer. Something is coming out of you in a physical way, in no order, in the presence of God, and it is not making an argument.

You are pouring out in the way that is available to you, and it has never once had to arrive in words to be poured out before Him. Psalm 62:8 gives a physical verb rather than a spoken one and puts the pouring in His presence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives what a person cannot say.

It does not have to be for anything

Here is the thing I most want to take off you, because I think you are carrying it and it is heavy for no reason.

The thing you are making does not have to be for her.

I suspect that thought has been in the room. That it should be a memorial, or in her colors, or something you could give to somebody who loved her. And maybe that will happen and it would be a good thing if it did. But it is not owed, and if you make thirty things that have nothing to do with her at all, none of that is a failure to honor anybody.

And the other side of it: if what you are making is unbearably about her, that is also allowed, and you do not have to explain that to anybody either.

The rule I want to leave you with is that there is no rule. Your hands do not have to mean anything by this.

You are allowed to make something that is not about her, and it has never once been a measure of how much she is missed. The written word says pour out your heart and never once specifies the shape it should take, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a grieving person off the requirement to be doing it properly.

Twenty minutes, and do not decide what it is for

So here is the whole of it.

Do twenty minutes, and do not decide what it is for.

Not for her, not for anybody, not a gift, not a memorial, not practice. Start it without knowing, and let it stay not knowing for the twenty minutes. If halfway through it becomes obvious what it is, that is fine, but do not go looking.

I am asking that because deciding what it is for is how the thing turns into a task, and a task is one more thing you are currently failing at or getting right. This one cannot be got right.

And if you sit down and do nothing with your hands for the twenty minutes, that also counts and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a room with somebody whose hands are moving and whose mind is somewhere else entirely.

You are able to work without knowing what it is for, and it has never once needed a purpose to be permitted. Psalm 62:8 asks for the pouring out and never once for the arranging of it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in twenty unexplained minutes.