Nobody Wants What I Was Good At

The place closed. Or it did not close, it changed, and the changing meant that the thing you did for twenty two years is now done by something else or by somebody in another country or by nobody at all.

And the word that gets used is a cruel one, and you have started using it about yourself.

Obsolete.

I want to argue with that word, carefully, because I am not going to insult you by pretending the industry did not move. It moved. That is a fact and you were standing in it.

What I want to separate is two things that have been welded together in your head for a while now.

One is the job. The job went. That is real and I am not softening it.

The other is the skill, and the skill is not the job. The skill is what was underneath the job, and it is the thing you would still have if the building had never existed.

You are not obsolete, and an industry closing has never once reached inside a man and removed what he knew how to do.

And I am not going to tell you that something opens up. I do not know that. Nobody who writes honestly about work can tell a man in his fifties what the year holds.

Shall ye not know it

There is a line in Isaiah spoken to people whose whole world had been taken apart, and it is not a comfort so much as a question.

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19, King James Version)

Shall ye not know it.

That is the part I want. Not the promise of the new thing. The question about whether they would recognize it when it came, which implies that a thing can be springing up in front of a man who is not looking at it.

You are being asked a question rather than handed a schedule, and a man who cannot see it yet has never once been a man it is not happening near. Isaiah 43:19 says now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the showing rather than leaving a man to guess.

And notice where the way gets made. In the wilderness. Rivers in the desert.

Not in a different place. In the place that is already empty. The location does not change in that verse. What changes is what is running through it.

You have a road being made in the ground you are actually standing on, and a wilderness has never once been disqualified as a place for a way to run through. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a way where a man can see no road at all, and it is written in Isaiah 43:19 about a desert rather than about a better country.

The job is not the skill

Now let me be concrete, because a man who spent twenty two years in one place does not want generalities.

Think about what you actually did. Not the title. The work.

You read a machine or a material or a set of figures and knew when something was going wrong before the instrument said so. You trained people. You dealt with a supplier who was difficult, every month, for years, and kept the relationship. You worked to a standard where being nearly right was the same as being wrong.

None of those things belonged to the industry. Every one of them is portable, and every one of them is rare.

You are carrying a set of capabilities that were built inside one building and never once belonged to it, and a closed shutter has never once emptied a man's hands. The written word makes a way in the ground that is already there, and the Spirit of God is the one who works with what a man already carries into a wilderness.

And here is the thing about industries moving, and I say it as a fact and not as a comfort.

The work did not stop existing. It got broken up and scattered. Somebody still needs that thing done, in smaller pieces, in more places, by fewer people. The demand is not gone. The container is gone.

You have a market that is scattered rather than absent, and a disappeared employer has never once been the same as a disappeared need. The Holy Spirit is the one who opens eyes onto what is actually there, and Isaiah 43:19 puts the question about perceiving before anything else happens.

Say what you do, not where you did it

So here is the assignment, and the wording is the whole thing.

Say out loud the one thing you are genuinely good at, and name one person who needs it. Isaiah 43:19 asks whether a man will recognize what is springing up, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man the words for what is in his own hands.

And the rule is this. Do not name the industry.

Not I was in print. Not I was at the plant. Those sentences hand everything over to a thing that closed.

Say the capability. I can find the fault in a system before it breaks. I can teach somebody to do a job properly in three days. I can handle a difficult supplier without losing the account.

You are able to describe what you can do without naming a building, and a skill said plainly has never once needed an employer standing behind it. The Spirit of God is the one who separates a man from a company in his own mind, and the written word promises rivers rather than a return to the old country.

And then one name. One person, within reach this week, who has that problem.

You have somebody in mind already, and the person who came to you in four seconds has never once been the wrong place to start. The Holy Spirit is the one who brings a name forward, and it is written in Isaiah 43 that the new thing springs in a place that already looked empty.