The notebook · July 24, 2026

The Version Where I’m Right

There is a message I have not sent. It has been sitting in my drafts for three days, and I have rewritten it six times. It is not a long message: four lines, to someone I spoke to sharply last week, in front of other people, over something that did not deserve it.

The first version was short. Too short, I told myself: it looked dashed off. So I added a sentence explaining that I had been at the end of my rope that day. In the third, I mentioned, very delicately, that the remark which had set me off was not exactly a happy one either. By the fifth there was a whole paragraph on the context, and I think an outside reader would have struggled to say which of the two of us was apologising.

This morning I read all six versions back to back. It was instructive and not very flattering. You can see the drift plainly: with every rewrite, I come off a little better. The draft was no longer looking for forgiveness, it was looking for a balanced verdict. And as long as I keep rewriting it, I do not have to send it — which is probably the heart of the matter. Six versions is six days bought.

What I am discovering, and it bothers me, is that I do exactly the same thing when I pray. I come with the case, and before I have even named what I did, I have started to place it in context. As though God needed the full file to reach a fair decision. As though forgiveness were the outcome of a well-argued trial, and not something you receive empty-handed. Part of me would rather have an equitable verdict than a free pardon — because a verdict, at least, I will have earned.

The psalm I like least these days is the fifty-first. Not because it is harsh: because it pleads nothing. “Create in me a clean heart, God.” No context, no mitigating circumstances, no mention of what anyone else did. David does not defend himself once.

I am going to send the first version. Monday’s, the four lines, without the paragraph. It does not show me in a good light and it has one flaw none of the others has: it is true.

In Manna, tomorrow morning, there will be a prayer that needs none of my explanations.