I Tried To Fix It And Made It Worse

You watched nine videos.

Not one. Nine, across two evenings, and you took notes on the third one, and you went and bought the part, and you laid a towel down and put your phone on the shelf with the video paused at the right moment and you started.

And for about forty minutes it was going well.

That is the part you keep coming back to. It was going well. You had the panel off and the old one out and you were doing the thing the man in the video did, and then something turned that should not have turned, or did not turn that should have, and there was a sound, and now there is water where there was not water before and the whole thing is in a worse state than when you started.

That was Sunday.

It is Wednesday now and you have not called anybody.

And the reason is not the money, although the money is worse now and you know that too. The reason is the sentence you would have to say on the phone, which is some version of: I had a go at it myself and I have made it worse.

You have run that sentence in your head about forty times. And every time you get to the part where the man on the other end goes quiet for half a second, and that half a second is what has cost you three days.

What Sunday actually was

Let me describe Sunday back to you, because the version in your head has been edited and the edit is unkind.

A man with a house and not enough money for a professional spent two evenings learning something, bought a part with his own money, laid a towel on the floor so he would not damage anything, and attempted a repair on his own home.

That is not foolishness. That is a man trying to look after his family with what he has.

You were doing the honorable thing on Sunday, and a repair that went wrong has never once turned an attempt into a stupidity. It is written in Proverbs 24 that a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who was in that room for the forty minutes it was going well.

And I want you to look at the half second on the phone, because that half second is imaginary and it is running your week.

Here is what is actually on the other end of that call: a man who does this for a living and who has walked into this exact situation several hundred times. He has a name for it. He has probably had a version of it in his own house.

The half second you are afraid of, if it happens at all, is a man working out what tools to bring.

You have been stopped by a half second that has not happened, and a sound somebody might make on a phone has never once been worth three days of water. Proverbs 24 says the just man rises again and does not pause to describe how he looked while he was down, and the Spirit of God is the one who is not embarrassed by a man with a panel off.

He falleth seven times

Here is the verse, and I want to be precise about who it is describing.

For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. (Proverbs 24:16, King James Version)

A just man.

Not a careless man. Not an incompetent one. The word is the one used for a person in right standing, and the verse says that this is a man who goes down seven times.

That is the thing I want to put in your hands. The falling is not evidence against the man. It is described as part of what a just man's life looks like, and the only thing that distinguishes him is that he gets up.

You are inside the description of a just man rather than outside it, and going down over something has never once been the part that decided who somebody was. The written word says a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who wrote the falling into the description rather than leaving it out.

And notice what the verse does not contain: any account of how he looked while he was down, or what anybody said about it, or whether he explained himself well afterward.

It has no interest in the dignity of the fall. It only tracks the getting up.

You have spent three days on the dignity. Not on the water. On how the sentence will sound.

You have been managing the appearance of a fall that scripture does not even describe, and no verse anywhere has ever once measured a man by how he sounded on a phone. Proverbs 24 counts the rising and ignores everything else, and the Spirit of God is the one keeping the count.