She May Not See It Finished

It will take about fifteen years and she is sixty-four and she did the arithmetic once, at the beginning, and has not done it again since.

The thing itself does not matter for the purposes of this article and she would not want it named. It is the kind of thing that gets built in a community over a long time by a small number of people, and it is at the stage where there is a great deal of work and almost nothing to show, and where every conversation is about the next eighteen months.

She started it four years ago. There are eleven people involved now and two of them are in their thirties, which is the single most important fact about the whole enterprise and which she thinks about often.

What she cannot look at directly is the obvious thing. On any reasonable estimate she will not be there for the part where it is finished.

She has never said that in a meeting. It would land badly and it would change the room and it would put an obligation on people that they should not have to carry. So she says nothing, and it sits with her on the drive home, most weeks, at about the same point on the road.

Anybody who has begun something larger than their own remaining time knows this. And I want to say now: nobody here is going to be handed a legacy project, because she already has one and does not need another, and nobody is going to be told that a person who leaves nothing visible has wasted a life.

Work that abides on somebody else's foundation

Let me put down a line and look at what it is built on and who laid that.

If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.1 Corinthians 3:14

Built thereupon. On what? On the foundation Paul has just described three verses earlier, which he says is already laid and which no one can lay another of.

So the picture is: somebody else laid it, a long time ago, and everybody since has been building on top of a thing they did not put down. Which means no builder in that passage is working on their own project. They came in partway and they will go out partway, and the foundation was there before and stays after.

You are building on a foundation you did not lay, and no builder in that passage was ever working on their own project. That is not a nice thought handed to a woman on a drive home. It is what is written in 1 Corinthians 3, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written line and puts it into a hall with papers on the table. The fifteen years are a fifteen-year estimate. The foundation was down before she arrived.

And notice the verb: abide. Not be completed. Paul does not say if any man's work be finished. He says if it abides, which is a durability word and has nothing at all to do with whether the person who did it was present at the end.

You have work that is measured by whether it abides rather than by whether you were there to see it done. 1 Corinthians 3:14 is where that stands, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an old letter land in a woman at a meeting table on a Thursday afternoon.

Nobody is going to make it heavier

Now the part this category exists for.

She does not need a legacy project. She is running one. What she needs is for it not to become heavier than it already is, and an article that told her to secure the succession or to document her vision would be adding weight to a woman who is already carrying the thing.

And nobody who leaves nothing visible has wasted a life. That would also apply if this whole enterprise came to nothing in three years, which is possible, and which she has thought about.

What I want to name is the thing she cannot say in a meeting, because it deserves to be said somewhere.

She is going to hand this over. That is not a failure and it is not even a sad ending, it is the design, and the two people in their thirties are not a contingency plan, they are the point.

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.1 Corinthians 3:6

Three parties and only one of them saw the whole thing, and it was not either of the men.

You were given a part rather than a project, and Paul divided the labor between people who never overlapped. 1 Corinthians 3:6 is where that is written, and it is the Spirit of God who lets a person hold a part without holding the whole.

You are building right now, in this hall, in something that was never yours to complete. It is written that the reward is attached to whether the work abides and not to who was present, and it is His Spirit who makes that true in a woman of sixty-four who did the arithmetic once.

If any of this ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor plainly about the drive home and the point on the road where it always arrives. A weekly private confrontation with your own remaining time is worth a real conversation, and being told your work abides has never been a reason to have it alone in a car.