The Job I Lost and Nothing Over It

He handed the badge over at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday, and the woman at the desk who took it had been to his wedding, and neither of them said anything, and that is the piece of it that comes back.

Not the meeting. Not the letter. The desk.

Marcos had eleven years at that firm. He trained four of the people who still work there. He was good, and everybody says so still, and two of them message him at Christmas.

That was three years ago and he was drinking then, and drinking is why, and there is no version of the story where that is not true, and he does not tell it any other way.

He has work now. Different work, less money, decent people. He has been sober for a long stretch. His wife has stopped watching him, which he noticed the month it happened and has never mentioned.

And what has happened since he stopped is that Tuesday morning has arrived at full volume for the first time in three years.

Because at the time there was something over the top of it. There was a way to end an afternoon where it did not have to be looked at. And now there is not, and the desk is there, and the woman's face is there, and the eleven years are there, and the whole thing arrives in his chest at about the same strength it would have had if it had happened last week.

You know that morning. It might be a job, a house, a license, a marriage. It happened, and there is no version where it was not your doing, and back then something covered it. Now nothing does, and it is arriving as though it were new.

You are handed something in exchange for what you are carrying, and you were never asked to bring anything but the ashes. Isaiah says He gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, and every one of those is a swap and not a wage; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that exchange real for a man who still sees a desk when he closes his eyes.

Beauty for ashes

Let me name what is actually going on, because it is easy to name it wrong and the wrong name will send you the wrong way.

This is not guilt exactly. Guilt is about a thing you did and it can be settled. This is the felt weight of a consequence, arriving late, at full strength, in a body that is no longer numbed to it. Nothing new has happened. What has changed is that you can feel it, and feeling something at full strength for the first time three years later is disorienting in a way nobody warns you about.

And I am not going to trace it for you, and I am not going to tell you that working through it is what will keep you standing. That would put your whole life on the far side of a piece of work nobody assigned you, and it is not true.

Here is what the prophet says God gives.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.Isaiah 61:3

Three exchanges, and look at what is on your side of each one. Ashes. Mourning. A spirit of heaviness. Not repentance, not progress, not a good year. He names the raw material as the very thing you would be embarrassed to bring.

You are able to bring the only thing you have, and you were never going to be turned away for arriving with ashes. That is what stands written in Isaiah 61, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an exchange out of what a man is currently holding at eleven in the morning.

And give is the verb. Not sell, not award, not release upon completion. Give. There is nothing in that sentence about earning, and there is nothing about the ashes being small ones or the mourning being reasonable. He gives.

You have a gift rather than a wage, and you were never in a position to be paid for any of this. Scripture uses the word give three times in one verse, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man from turning a gift back into a transaction he has to qualify for.

Now the last one, because it is the one that touches a Tuesday morning. The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. A garment is worn on the outside and other people see it. He is not only offering something internal. He is describing a man who goes out among other people wearing something other than his heaviness, and that is not pretending, because the garment is given rather than assembled.

You are dressed in something given rather than manufactured, and you were never expected to produce a face for the world out of your own resources. The written word calls it a garment, which is an outward thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the clothing for a man who has to be in a room with people tomorrow.

And the plain thing, said the way this site always says it. This is worth telling somebody. Not to be talked out of it, and not to have it explained, but because a thing said out loud to a person stops being a thing that only exists inside one man. A counselor is a good thing. A friend, a doctor, a room in a church basement where people say exactly this. All of that is God's kindness with a face on it, and using it is not a lesser road.