The One Thing I Was Good At

He was not a clever boy at school and he knew it early and it never once bothered him, because at seventeen he found a thing he could do better than almost anybody.

He could work. Not just hard: well. He could see how a load should go. He could get through a day that finished two other men and be fine at the end of it, and there was a particular quiet pleasure in being the one they gave the awkward job to.

Twenty two years of that.

It went on an ordinary Tuesday, on a lift he had done ten thousand times, at about half past nine in the morning.

Two years on, this is where he is. There is a thing that happens when he stands up from low. There is a good day and then a bad three. There are tablets he does not like taking and a physiotherapist he likes very much and a set of exercises he does most days.

He is not going back. That has been said to him kindly, twice, by people with the authority to say it.

And there is a sentence he says, when anybody asks, which is that he is doing all right, which is true about the pain.

It is not true about the rest.

Because what went on that Tuesday was not only a back. It was the one thing he was better at than other people. It was being the man they gave the awkward job to. He is forty four and he cannot answer the question of what he is now, and nobody has asked him it, and he has not asked it out loud either.

That is you, and what you are carrying is a bereavement and not a complaint.

Three things I am not doing

I am not going to tell you what your back can do. That is your physiotherapist's and your doctor's, and the exercises they gave you are not a lesser thing than prayer. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Psalm 41:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

I am not going to tell you that God took this to teach you something. People say that and it is meant kindly and it is not something I am willing to claim, because I do not know, and putting a lesson on a man's injury is a way of tidying up a loss that has not been mourned yet.

And I am not going to move you quickly to the bright side. There is a real loss here. Being brisk about it is the thing everybody has already done to you, and it is why you say you are doing all right.

You are not required to find the good in this yet. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it says nearness rather than explanation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a yard at half past nine with a man who cannot lift.

The verse where God does the nursing

There is a line in Psalm 41 that is unusually physical, and most translations of it are worth reading slowly.

The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.Psalm 41:3

Make all his bed. That is not a large spiritual image. That is what somebody does in a room, for a person who cannot do it themselves: straightening the sheet, turning the pillow, making the place where a body is stuck slightly more bearable.

And it is God doing it.

Look at the scale of that. The one who made everything is described here bending over a bed. Not curing the man in the verse, at least not in that line. Attending to him, physically, in the place where he is.

That is the picture I want you to have, because you have been assuming that God's involvement with your situation would have to look like your back being fixed, and that in the absence of that there is nothing. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Psalm 41:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

There is this instead, and it is not a consolation prize; it is the same God at closer range.

You are not unattended in this. Scripture says thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness, Psalm 41:3, and the image is of God at the level of the bed rather than at the level of the sky, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that work in a bad three days.

The loss you have not been allowed to name

Let me say the thing nobody has said to you.

You lost a job, and that has been acknowledged, and there was probably some money and some paperwork about it.

You also lost the thing you were good at. That is a different loss and it has had no acknowledgement at all, and it is much bigger. I have no authority to say that by myself. Scripture carries it in Psalm 41:3, and the Holy Spirit carries it to you.

For twenty two years you knew exactly what you were worth on any given day, because it was measurable, and you were near the top of it. Being the one they gave the awkward job to is not vanity; it is a man knowing his place in the world and liking it. That is Scripture's sentence and not mine, Psalm 41:3, and it is the Holy Spirit and not this page who makes it true where you are.

That is gone, and nobody has said sorry about it, because our language has no way of saying sorry for that.

So it has gone unmourned, and unmourned losses do not sit quietly. They come out as flatness, and as a shortness with people who do not deserve it, and as saying you are doing all right in a voice that ends the conversation.

You are not making a fuss about a job. Scripture says a broken spirit drieth the bones, Proverbs 17:22, and it is an observation that a broken inside does physical work on a man, and the Holy Spirit is not treating this as a smaller loss than you are.

What was actually good about you

Here is the part I would push back on, gently and firmly.

You have described your value as your back. It was not your back. Scripture stands under that in Psalm 41:3, and the Holy Spirit does the part no sentence can do.

Anybody can be strong. What you had, and what men noticed, was judgement: seeing how a load should go, knowing what would take a day and what would take three, being the one who could be relied on when a job went wrong at four in the afternoon.

That is not in your spine. That is twenty two years of accumulated understanding, and it is entirely intact, and it is worth a great deal in a dozen rooms you have not considered because you have been grieving the lifting. It is written, in Psalm 41:3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

I am not going to be glib and tell you what to retrain as. That is a real and difficult question with money attached to it. But the raw material has not been damaged, and you have been writing yourself off on the basis of the one component that has.

You are not what your back could carry. Scripture says man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart, 1 Samuel 16:7, and the outward measure is exactly the one you have been using on yourself, and the Holy Spirit does not value a man by what he can pick up.