E-Letters

Included in our attempts to share Life in these e-letters will come our foibles. This e-letter was written by Mark Haskins about one such mistake that happened with us and how God spoke into it. It's powerful and speaks to all our lives.

Jeff

Unedited Us

By Mark Haskins
Aug 17, 2009

"Jeff, I need to come by and do one last edit on the essay before you send it out as an e-letter." Such was the phone request I made, hoping that I hadn't missed the last window for changes before Jeff uploaded the document, put the Expeditions of the Heart banner across the top of it, and hit the infamous SEND key.

"Sure, Mark, I'll be at Greenberry's meeting Scott for some coffee this afternoon...come by and I'll have it on my laptop and you can edit it there."

"Sounds good. I'll see you there."

After an hour of editing (the third go 'round, in three days), I was done and pleased with the changes. (I confess, I am a perfectionist. It is my M.O.) It was an improved message. That evening the e-letter went out. NONE of the final changes were there! Oh no, the corrected grammar was gone. The perfected turn of a phrase was absent. The polished prose was not there! It didn't matter why they weren't there. The world was reading a less-than-perfect (in my mind) piece of my writing.

At a gathering of a few close brothers in Christ the following Sunday afternoon, I was relaying a fuller version of these events and everyone was so kind in assuring me that they thought the e-letter "was great," "no room for improvement," "don't worry about it." I was blessed by their kind words. The big blessing though was yet to come.

Several days later I received the following email from Robert who had heard the story Sunday.

Hey Mark:

I woke up this morning with this on my mind: I was thinking of your e-letter and how it went out unedited. We were laughing about that Sunday.... but Father seems to be saying something to us, and to you....He spoke to my heart... "I love the Unedited version of Mark Haskins."

We men are so concerned with editing our lives in order to present an appearance, at least, that's worthy of God. But Father is impressing on me today with his affection for us is in our PRE-edited state. I am privileged to be getting to know you, Mark... the unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, raw, in a word, real version of the man, Mark Haskins.

your brother
Robert

Wow! In 56 years I have never had anyone say that to me. I melted when I read Robert's words. The fact that the God of this universe, our Heavenly Father, woke Robert early one morning to share that with him...about me....about all of us....what a blessing! The fact that another man, in the Spirit, was thinking of me in such a tender and kind way....what a blessing! The fact that Robert actually took the time to communicate all that had been revealed to him, to me...what a blessing! Most of all, what a simple, potent, freeing truth...my Heavenly Father knows the unedited version of me and loves that person.

It gets better. Later that week, Robert shared what the Lord had impressed upon his heart with Jeff, who was greatly blessed. Then, Jeff shared the story with Gary who was greatly blessed. In a meeting the following week, Jeff asked Robert to share the story....15 more men were blessed. I told my wife about all this, as did Jeff and Robert, they were each greatly blessed. And on and on...a simple truth....a simple story....a creative God who took one man's mundane story of a failed editing attempt and subsequently blessed a couple dozen others with a truth we all need to know, we all need to have as our own, and we all need to not forget. He is a wonderful Heavenly Father! We can rest. We need not work at polishing and editing the unedited version of ourselves. He loves the unedited version of me and the unedited version of you. And it is only His love and His indwelling Spirit that will perfect us. All we need do is believe Him, let Him, love Him, and seek Him.