I Was Good At My Job And Now I Am Lost

You ran a department for twenty-six years.

Budgets, people, timetables that changed every week, three restructures, and a period in the middle where you were doing two jobs at once and nobody noticed because nothing dropped.

And now you sit at a kitchen table in front of a small screen and you cannot make a thing do what you want, and there is nobody to ask, and you feel about eleven years old.

The gap between those two women is what this is about.

Because you have been trying to work out which one is the real one, and you have quietly begun to suspect it is the second one, and that the first one was somehow always temporary.

I want to say the plain thing before anything else. Both of those are you, and the second one is not the truth about the first.

Here is what actually happened, and it is not a decline.

In that job you had twenty-six years of accumulated context. You knew who to ask, what things were called, which rules were real and which were somebody's preference. You did not learn any of that in a week. You built it, slowly, over decades, and by the end it was invisible even to you.

Then you left, and you walked into a room where none of that exists, and you are being asked to perform at the level you performed at with all of it.

That is not a fair test. It is not even a test. It is a comparison of a woman with twenty-six years of context to a woman with none, and both of them are you, and the difference is the context and not the woman.

He which hath begun a good work in you

There is a line about something started and not finished, and the tense in it does all the work.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6, King James Version)

Hath begun. Past. Already done. Something started, and the starting is not in doubt.

And then will perform it, which is future and continuing, and belongs to somebody else entirely.

You have a good work in you that was already begun and is not yours to finish, and no unfinished thing has ever once been the same as an abandoned one. Philippians 1:6 says he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that tense real for a woman who feels like she has come to a stop.

Now notice who is doing the performing. Not the person the work is in.

That is unusual and it is worth sitting with. The one carrying the work is not the one responsible for completing it, which means the work being unfinished says nothing whatsoever about the carrier.

You were never responsible for finishing what was started in you, and no incomplete work has ever once been laid at the feet of the one it was begun in. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries a work to completion, and it is written that the performing belongs to the one who began rather than to the one it was begun in.

And notice where the finishing line is. Until the day of Jesus Christ.

That is a very long horizon. It is not the end of a career, or the end of a decade, or the point at which somebody feels competent again.

You are inside a timescale that does not end at sixty-five, and no retirement has ever once been the day anything in a person was declared complete. The Spirit of God is the one who works on a horizon longer than any career, and Scripture puts the completion at a day nobody has seen yet.

Two women and one context

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not close a gap that wide.

Do the comparison honestly. Put the two women side by side and name what is different.

The first one had twenty-six years of knowing what things were called, who to ask, and what mattered. The second one has none of that, in a completely different area, with nobody to ask.

Everything else about them is identical. Same mind, same judgment, same capacity to learn, same stubbornness that got her through three restructures.

You are the same woman in a room with none of her context, and no absence of context has ever once been the same thing as an absence of capacity. The Spirit of God is the one who names the actual difference between two situations, and Philippians 1:6 puts the good work in the person rather than in the circumstances.

And here is the second half, which is the part nobody has told you. In that job, you had people.

You had a woman down the corridor who knew the thing you did not. You asked her constantly. That was not a weakness in your competence, it was your competence, because knowing who to ask is most of what running anything actually is.

That skill is not lost. The corridor is.

That is a gap in the arrangements and it is not a gap in you. Nobody ever told her that either.

You have never once lost the skill of knowing who to ask, and no missing corridor has ever been the same thing as a missing ability. The written word puts the good work inside a person where circumstances cannot reach it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a lost room from a lost capacity.

Say it in the present tense

Now the small thing, and it is a matter of tense.

I am not going to suggest you take a course or set about learning anything systematically. That may come and it is not what today is for.

Say out loud one thing you were good at, in the present tense, and do not add anything after it.

You are able to say one true sentence about yourself out loud, and stating a capacity has never once been boasting in anybody's kitchen. Philippians 1:6 puts the good work in the present continuous, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman says something true about herself for the first time in a while.

The present tense is the whole exercise. Not, I was good at reading a room. I am good at reading a room.

Because everything about the way you talk about yourself has quietly moved into the past, and a person who describes all of their capacities in the past tense has told themselves something they never meant to say.

And do not add anything after it. No, well, I used to be. No, not that it matters now. No, although obviously not with this.

The addition is where the whole thing gets undone, and leaving it off is most of the work.

You are speaking about yourself in the tense the verse uses, and one sentence with nothing added after it has never once been an overstatement. The Spirit of God is the one who returns a person's own capacities to the present tense, and it is written that the good work is being performed rather than remembered.