I Water Them Until They Drown

You do not kill things by forgetting them.

That is worth saying first, because most of what gets written about this is written for the other sort of person, and every time you read it you feel like a fraud. Water it more, they say. Do not let it dry out. Set a reminder.

You do not need a reminder. You are at that pot four times a day.

What actually happens in your house is that things die of attention.

You water it, and then a couple of hours later you look at it and something in you is not satisfied, and you give it a little more. You move it into better light. Then you worry that the light is too strong and you move it back. You touch the soil. You lift the pot to feel the weight of it. You take a leaf between two fingers.

And it dies, slowly, of being handled.

You are allowed to leave a thing alone, and love has never once been measured by how often a person interferes with it.

Now, here is the thing you already know and have not said out loud.

The watering is not about the plant.

You are not standing there four times a day because you have made an error about how much water a small green thing requires. You are standing there because standing there does something for you, and the pot has become a place where you put your hands when your mind will not settle.

Be still, and know

There is a line in Psalm 46 that gets used as a comfort and is actually a command, and the difference matters here.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm 46:10, King James Version)

Be still.

That is an instruction, given in the middle of a psalm about the earth being removed and the mountains being carried into the sea. It is not said in a calm room. It is said in the noise.

You are being told to be still by somebody who knew exactly what the room sounded like, and stillness has never once been offered as a thing for people whose lives are already quiet. Psalm 46:10 sits inside a psalm about mountains going into the sea, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a command about stillness land on a woman standing at a windowsill.

Now look at what the stillness is for.

Be still, and know that I am God. The stillness is not the end of it. The stillness is what makes room for the knowing. As long as the hands are moving, the knowing has nowhere to land, because the moving is doing the job the knowing was meant to do.

That is precisely your arrangement with that pot.

You have been using your hands to do a work that was never theirs to do, and constant motion has never once produced the settledness it was reaching for. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the settling that no amount of tending can manufacture, and the written word puts the stillness first and the knowing directly after it.

And notice that the verse does not ask you to feel calm.

It says be still, which is about what the body does. It does not say be untroubled. You can be entirely churned up inside and still put a watering can down, and the psalm asks for the second thing and not the first.

You are able to be still on the outside while the inside is still going, and a quiet body has never once required a quiet mind to come first. The word gives an instruction about stillness rather than about feelings, and the Spirit of God is the one who meets a person in the gap between the two.

What the watering is actually for

Let me be careful here, because I am not going to hand you a diagnosis and I am not qualified to give you one.

But you can look at the pattern yourself, and the pattern is not really hidden.

The watering goes up when other things are unsettled. You know when. There are weeks when you barely think about it and weeks when you are at that sill constantly, and the difference is never the plant.

You were never doing anything wrong by needing somewhere to put your hands, and a habit that formed around a worry has never once been a character fault. The Holy Spirit is the one who is gentle with the reason a habit started, and Psalm 46:10 is spoken to people in genuine upheaval rather than to people expected to cope better.

Here is what makes it hard to stop, and it is worth naming plainly.

Watering feels like love. It has the shape of care. Every time it happens, some part of a person registers that something is being looked after, and that registration is real and it is the thing the reaching goes back for.

So being told to stop feels like being told to care less. That is why the advice everybody gives you does not work.

You are not being asked to care less about anything, and leaving a thing alone has never once been the same as neglecting it. The Spirit of God is the one who can hold a person still without cooling anything in them, and the written word asks for stillness precisely so that something else can be known.

Put the can out of sight

So here is the assignment, and it is about the can rather than the plant.

Put the watering can somewhere you cannot see it from the sill. For one week.

Under the sink. In the garage. Behind a door. Somewhere that requires you to go and get it, deliberately, as a decision.

Not so that the plant gets less water. So that you find out how many times a day you were reaching for it without deciding to.

You are carrying something in your hands that no amount of thinking would have told you about, and one small obstacle has never once been too little to make a habit visible. Psalm 46:10 says be still, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the moment where a person reaches for something and stops.

I want you to expect it to be uncomfortable. Genuinely.

You will go to the sill, and the can will not be there, and there will be a small unpleasant gap, and in that gap you are going to feel whatever the watering has been covering. That is not a side effect. That is the entire point of the week.

Do not do anything about the feeling. Do not fix it. Just stand there for a second and let it be, and then go and do something else.

You are able to stand at a windowsill with nothing in your hands, and a few seconds of discomfort has never once been more than a person could hold. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in that particular gap, and the word says be still and know, which puts the knowing on the other side of the stillness rather than before it.

And the plant, incidentally, will probably do better. But that is not why we are doing it and I do not want you watching for it.