I Was Part Of The Disappearing

She is eighty two and she is the last person in that congregation who knows how it used to be done, and what keeps her awake is not that.

There was a way of doing something in that place. It does not matter for the purposes of this page what it was, and this page is not going to name it, because the moment it is named somebody starts arguing about whether it should have been kept and that is not what this is about.

It was a way of doing a thing, in one building, that had been done that way since before she was born, and it is gone.

Nobody stopped it. That is the first part. There was no meeting and no decision and no argument, and the people who run that place now are good people who would be genuinely upset to know that anything had been lost on their watch.

It went the way these things go. A person who did it died. A different person did it differently the following year because they did not know, and nobody corrected them, because who corrects somebody about that. And after about five years the different way was the way, and after fifteen the old way was a thing one very old woman remembered.

And here is the part that keeps her awake, and she has told nobody.

She stopped too.

She could have gone on doing it herself. Nobody would have minded, nobody would have stopped her, and for a few years she did. And then one year she did not, because she was tired, and the following year she did not because she had not the year before.

So she is not standing outside this watching something be taken. She is one of the ones who let go.

You know that thought.

Maybe you watched something go out of a family, or a trade, or a place, and you were there the whole time. Maybe you can name three things that used to happen and no longer do, and you were present for all three and stopped one of them yourself.

Nobody is a villain in this and there is nobody to be angry at, including you. Things go the way that one went, quietly, with everybody being reasonable and nobody deciding anything.

Somebody else keeps the record

Here is a sentence from Malachi, tucked into a chapter about a difficult time, and it is one of the most practical comforts in the book.

Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.Malachi 3:16

A book of remembrance was written before him.

Read who does the writing. Not the people. They talked to each other, and He listened, and the record was made on His side of the room.

That is a description of a moment when a way of doing things was falling apart, and a small number of people were keeping something going by talking about it, and the text does not put the weight of preserving it on them. It says a book was written, and it was written before Him, and it holds.

You are not the only record of it, and a book of remembrance was written by somebody else. That is what Malachi 3:16 says by putting the writing on His side (Malachi 3:16), and it is the Holy Spirit who brings all things to remembrance, which is a work of keeping that has never depended on one eighty two year old woman staying awake.

The stopping was not a betrayal

Now let me deal with what keeps you awake, and I am not going to soften it into nothing.

You did stop. That is true and it is not being denied.

And you stopped because you were tired, in a year when you were tired, at an age when people are tired, and then a second year followed a first the way years do. That is not a betrayal of anything. It is a woman getting older, which is not a moral event.

You have not let anything down, and being tired in a particular year is not a decision about a tradition. Scripture says he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), and it is the Holy Spirit who applies that to a real woman lying awake, and He has not been keeping a note of the year she stopped.

And this page will not tell you whether it should have been kept. You are not being handed a verdict on any practice, and nothing here rules on what any place ought to do. The word says let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (Romans 14:5), and it is His Spirit who does that persuading in a congregation over years, which is not a thing anybody outside it gets to settle.

What you are actually grieving

Here is the useful distinction, and it may let you sleep.

You are not grieving a method. If somebody proved to you tomorrow that the new way was better in every respect, you would still feel exactly what you feel.

You are grieving that a thing which was carried by people is now carried by nobody, and that you can feel the weight of being the last one holding it, and that when you go it goes.

That is a real grief and it deserves its own name rather than being filed under stubbornness about a practice.

You are carrying something that was meant to be carried by more than one person, and the tiredness of that is not a fault in you. The word says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2), and it is the Holy Spirit who is the Comforter, the one who comes alongside, which is exactly the position nobody in that building has been standing in for fifteen years, and He has.