I Have No Word For Myself

You can talk about the work all day. It is the word for yourself that you do not have.

Ask you what you did yesterday and you will be fluent. You collected the parts, you did the two jobs in town, you sorted out the man whose thing had stopped working, you wrote up the notes at eleven at night. Every task has a name and you know all of them.

Then a form asks your occupation and you sit there with a pen.

And you put something in eventually. Self employed, which says nothing. Various, which says less. Or you write the company name, which is not what was asked. Four years of trading and there is still no noun in the box.

I am not going to tell you that a title does not matter. It obviously matters, because you have been avoiding one for four years and you are not a man who avoids things for fun. I am going to talk about what a name actually is.

The question asked in the dark

There is a wrestling match at a river in Genesis and in the middle of it somebody asks a question that seems almost rude.

Jacob has been fighting all night with a man he cannot name. He asks for a blessing. And the answer he gets back is a question about himself.

And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. (Genesis 32:27, King James Version)

You are being asked a fair question, and having to answer it has never once been a trap. Genesis 32:27 has the question put plainly and the man answer it plainly with the name he already had, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that riverbank into a front room with a clipboard on the table.

Notice what Jacob does, because it is the whole thing. He does not explain. He does not give a history of himself or a list of what he has been doing. He says the word. One word, and it happens to be a word that means something unflattering.

He says it anyway. And the blessing does not wait for a better word.

You have a word available and it has never once needed to be impressive to be true. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a man able to answer a direct question about himself with a single honest syllable, and Genesis 32:27 has that answer given at night, tired, in the middle of a fight.

Why the box stays empty

Let me say what I think the empty box is, because it is not indecision.

A noun commits you. A list of tasks can be adjusted afterwards: if somebody is unimpressed you can add another task, or describe it differently, or point out that you also do the other thing. A noun just sits there and gets judged.

You were keeping your options open against a judgment that has not arrived, and you have never once needed to. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own blank space has been protecting, and Genesis 32:27 has a name given with no hedging anywhere around it.

There is a second thing and it is quieter. A noun makes it permanent in your own hearing. While there is no word, this is still a thing you are doing. Once there is a word, this is a thing you are. And you have not decided whether you are allowed to be that.

That decision has been sitting unopened in a drawer for four years while you have been doing the job every single day.

You have been the thing already, and the word was never what made it so. His Spirit is the one who settles a man about his own days without waiting for him to feel settled first, and the written word has a name said out loud at a river in Genesis 32:27 and a blessing given after it rather than before.

A noun, not a paragraph

So here is the exercise, and it is deliberately small.

Write one noun. Not a sentence and not a description of the service. A noun. Fitter. Gardener. Mechanic. Bookkeeper. Baker. Driver. Builder.

You are able to choose one word, and choosing it has never once been the same as claiming to be the best at it. Genesis 32:27 has the plainest possible answer given to the plainest possible question, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a single honest word available to a man who has only ever had a list.

It will be slightly wrong. That is fine and it is normal. No noun covers everything anybody does, and the man who writes mechanic also does paperwork and phone calls and apologies, and nobody is confused about that.

Pick the one that covers most of the week. You can always add the rest in a conversation, which is where the rest belongs.

You were never going to be held to one word forever, and it has never once been a contract. The Spirit of God carries a plain word past the part of a man that wants to keep every door open, and Genesis 32:27 shows a name given as an answer rather than as a promise.