She noticed it in a decision and it has bothered her since.
She was choosing between two ways of doing something. One was better for the people who would use it. The other was more visible, and would be attached to her name in a way the first would not, and would still be pointed at in ten years.
She chose the second one. And she noticed herself choosing it, which is the part that will not leave her alone.
She is thirty one, and underneath the decision is something she has never said to anybody, which is that she is frightened of being forgotten. Not of dying. Of the ordinary and complete disappearance that happens to almost everybody within about two generations.
She knows this is not unusual. Knowing it is not unusual has not made it smaller.
And now it is in the work, which is what alarms her. It has stopped being a private feeling and started being a factor in decisions, and it will be a factor again next month, and she does not know how to take it out.
You may know that decision. Not vanity exactly. A fear of disappearing that has quietly got into the choosing.
Known before you existed
Here is a sentence God says to a man, and the timing of it is the whole thing.
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.Jeremiah 1:5
Before I formed thee, I knew thee.
Not after you had done anything. Not once there was a person to observe. Before there was a body, before there was a life, before there was a single decision to assess: knew.
That is a knowing that does not depend on there being anything to know, which is a strange sentence and it is what the verse says.
Now put your fear next to it. You are frightened of an ending, of being unknown after you are gone. And the verse addresses the other end: you were known before you began.
That does not answer the fear by promising the future. It answers it by showing that your being known was never produced by your existing, and therefore does not depend on your existing.
You are known by God from before you were formed, and that knowing was never generated by anything you did. Jeremiah 1:5 puts the knowing before the forming, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach the other end of a life in a woman of thirty one.
Now the thing that alarmed you, and it deserves a straight answer.
The fear has got into your decisions. That is real and you are right to have noticed and I am not going to reassure you out of it. What I will say is that it got in there because it had nowhere else to go. An unspoken fear does not stay still; it looks for something to do, and in a maker it finds the work, because the work is the place where permanence seems available.
Named fears do less. That is not a technique, it is just how they behave.
You are not required to build yourself a memory, and the work is a poor place to put a fear about disappearing. The written word locates the knowing before the existing, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to secure your own remembrance through your output.
The honest half. You probably will be forgotten in the ordinary way, and I am not going to tell you otherwise. Almost everybody is, and the ones who are not mostly did not choose it.
And I am not going to tell you the decision you made was wicked. It was a decision with something in it, and you saw the something, which is more than most people manage.
There is a part only you can do. Name the thing you made for the wrong reason, out loud, without excusing it. And then say who knew you before you made anything at all.
The knowing was never produced by you existing.
You have been trying to secure something at the far end of your life, and the verse arrives at the other end entirely and settles it there: you were known before you were formed. Which means being known was never a thing your life generated, and it is not a thing your life's ending can undo.
You are known from before you were made, and nothing you build was ever going to add to it. Scripture puts the knowing before the forming and before the coming forth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a fear about disappearing off a woman's decisions.
So you will probably be forgotten in the ordinary way. And you were known before you began, and that stands at both ends.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud with the lights coming on below. The standing to speak them is yours in Christ, given to you rather than earned, which is why a woman who has just caught herself in a decision can speak with complete footing this evening. Scripture is the ground under every line, the Holy Spirit makes it live, and what anybody remembers of you is His to decide.
- Fear of disappearing, you got into my choosing and you were never going to be settled by anything I build. Scripture says before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, so being known was not produced by my existing and is not undone by my ending.
- Attempt to secure my own remembrance, in the name of Jesus you come out of my work. The written word puts the knowing before the forming, and the Holy Spirit has never once asked me to make something that would keep my name alive.
- Lord, You knew me before You formed me, and I am standing on that instead of on anything I make. I thank You that Jeremiah 1:5 puts the knowing before the forming and says it that way round, and I am naming what I did for the wrong reason and setting it beside what You said.
Jeremiah 1:5
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