I Handed It On And I Know It

You can see it in your son and it is unmistakable.

The way he goes about something. A thing he does when a conversation gets close to a subject. And you know exactly where it came from, because you did it in front of him for eighteen years without once noticing you were doing it.

Your daughter has a version of it too, expressed differently, and you have watched her hand a small piece of it to your granddaughter across a table.

And you are eighty one, and there is nothing to be done about eighteen years that finished forty years ago.

And nobody in that family has ever said one word about it. Not your son, who is fifty three and could have said something at any point in thirty years. Not your daughter. Certainly not your granddaughter, who has no idea there is anything to name.

So it sits where it has sat for about twenty years, and there is nobody it can be handed to.

What is actually available

Let me be honest about the shape of this, because false comfort would be an insult at your age.

You cannot undo it. There is no conversation that returns to your son at nine and gives him a different eighteen years, and anybody who suggests otherwise is not being serious.

That is the true part and it is heavy and I am not going to soften it.

You have been carrying something that genuinely cannot be reversed, and no honest account of a life has ever once been made lighter by pretending otherwise. Joel 2:25 says I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, which is the written word speaking about years that are actually gone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hold a woman in front of a true thing without it crushing her.

And you were handed it too. That is not an excuse and I am not offering it as one. It is a fact, and it belongs in an accurate account: somebody did it in front of you for eighteen years, and she was handed it by somebody else, and nobody in that line was ever offered another way.

She was right about at least one thing you never conceded to her. And you did the best you could with the tools that reached you.

You are able to hold your own part without becoming the whole of it, and one true thing about a life has never once been the sum of it. The Spirit of God is what keeps an honest look from turning into a verdict, and it is written in Joel 2 that the years the locust ate are the subject of a promise.

The years that the locust hath eaten

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25, King James Version)

Notice what God does not do in that verse, because it is the most surprising thing in it.

He does not say the years were not lost. He names four different destroyers and He calls the destruction by its own name, and He does not minimize a single season of it.

Scripture is willing to say that years were eaten. That is not a small thing, and it is the first comfort available here: God does not require you to describe eighteen years as better than they were.

You are dealing with a God who names a loss accurately, and no honest account of eaten years has ever once been unwelcome in His presence. It is written in Joel 2:25 that He will restore the years that the locust hath eaten, which is the written word conceding the eating before it says anything else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman of eighty one say a true sentence about her own house.

And then the promise, and here is where I want to be careful with you. The verse says God restores years. It does not say He rewinds them, and it does not tell you what a restored year will look like in your son.

That part is not written anywhere and nobody honest can tell you. What is written is that the restoring belongs to Him and that the eaten years are the specific thing He named.

You have something that belongs to God rather than a thing you must arrange, and no restoring has ever once been placed on the shoulders of the person who did the damage. The Spirit of God is the one who does that work in a family across generations, and Joel 2 puts the restoring in the first person and never in the reader's hands.

What eighty one can do

Here is what is actually available to you, and it is the one thing that was never available to any of the women before you.

You can name it out loud.

That is all, and it is enormous, because in four generations of your family nobody has ever done it. The thing has been handed down in silence every single time, and silence is most of what makes it travel.

You are able to do at eighty one the one thing nobody in this line has done, and speaking a thing out loud has never once required the years to be recoverable. The Holy Spirit is the one present when something is finally named after four generations, and it is written that He will restore the years that the locust hath eaten.

And you can do it twice. Once alone, which is the assignment. And once, if you decide to, in front of one of them.

The version in front of them is short and it is not an apology speech. It is one sentence. I did this in front of you and I know I did.

No explanation. No account of your own mother. No request for a response, because a request would put them in the position of having to comfort you, and they will do it, and that is not what this is for.

You are able to say one sentence and stop, and a plain naming has never once required anybody to say anything back. The Spirit of God is what makes eleven words possible at eighty one, and Joel 2:25 names the destroyers plainly before it says one word about restoring.