I Am Handing Over What I Always Did

You offered it and you meant it and you would do it again, and you have been sad about it since about the second week of October.

That is the part nobody warned you about.

Everybody was pleased. Your daughter was pleased. Somebody said it was about time and did not mean anything unkind by it. There was a general feeling of a good thing having happened, and it was a good thing, and you agreed with all of them.

And then you went home and sat down and something in you had gone quiet.

You have not said a word about it because there is no version of saying it that does not sound like taking it back. If you told anybody you were finding it hard, they would immediately offer it back to you, and you do not want it back, and now you would have to explain that too.

So you have been grieving something you chose, on your own, while everybody around you thinks the matter is settled.

Let me say the plain thing first, because it is not obvious and it should be. Grief does not check whether a loss was chosen. A thing you handed over willingly is still a thing that has gone.

Commit thou to faithful men

There is a line about handing work on that is worth reading carefully, because of what it does not contain.

And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2, King James Version)

Commit thou. It is a transfer word, and it is an instruction rather than a suggestion, and Paul is writing it as an old man who is at the end of his own working life.

Now notice what is not in the verse. There is no comfort attached. He does not say and it will not cost you anything. He does not say and you will feel fine about it. He gives the instruction and moves on, in a letter that also contains, a chapter or so later, some of the loneliest sentences he ever wrote.

That combination is the truest thing about handovers in the whole Bible. The instruction is right, and the man giving it was not having a nice time.

You are doing the right thing and finding it hard at the same time, and 2 Timothy 2:2 gives the instruction without one word of comfort attached to it. The written word puts the transfer and the loneliness in the same short letter, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman hold both without concluding that she got it wrong.

And look at the shape of what is being committed.

You have handed on something that goes further than you could have carried it, and it is written into 2 Timothy 2:2 that the point is others also. Scripture makes the handover about reach rather than about retirement, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody watching another pair of hands do her work.

What actually left

Let me be exact about the loss, because it has never been named and the not naming is why it sits so heavily.

You did not lose a job. The job would not be missed; parts of it were tiring and going was a relief.

What left was a position. For forty years the person who did that thing was you, and being the person who does a thing is a place to stand in a family. It is how people locate you. It is what somebody would have said about you if asked.

And it went in one afternoon, in a pleasant conversation, with everybody agreeing.

You were never grieving the work, and Scripture treats the committing of a thing to somebody else as a real event rather than a formality. 2 Timothy 2:2 gives it the weight of an instruction from a man at the end of his life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names what actually left when a woman could only say she felt strange.

And here is the second thing, which is quieter. There is a fear underneath it that you have not said out loud, and the fear is that this is the first of several. That handing over one part is the beginning of a sequence, and that the sequence has a direction, and that everybody else in the family has already worked out what the direction is.

That fear may or may not be accurate. What I can tell you is that it is doing a great deal of the work of making one small handover feel enormous.

You have been carrying one handover and a whole future at the same time, and the written word never once asks a person to hand over anything but the thing in front of them. 2 Timothy 2:2 commits one specific deposit to one specific set of hands, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a real loss from a forecast.

Name what left

So here is the assignment, and it is not about reversing anything.

Name out loud what the handover took, and name it to God.

Not to your daughter, who would offer it straight back and be hurt when you refused. Not to the family, who consider the matter closed and would be confused. To God, out loud, in a room by yourself.

Something like: I gave that away and I meant it, and I am the person who did it for forty years, and I am sad.

You are able to name a grief for a thing you chose, and it has never once meant you want it back. 2 Timothy 2:2 hands the deposit on without pretending the handing costs nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman saying a sentence nobody else would understand.

And I want to say why the naming is the whole of it, because it looks like very little.

Unnamed grief for a chosen loss does something particular. It curdles into doubt about the decision. A woman who cannot say I am sad ends up saying, six weeks later, perhaps I should not have, and then the whole good thing gets pulled back up by the roots to be examined.

Named once, honestly, it stays what it is: sadness about something real, sitting beside a decision that was right.

You are keeping a good decision and a real sadness in the same room, and Scripture puts the instruction and the loneliness inside one letter. 2 Timothy 2:2 does not soften anything, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets both be true in a woman at once.