My Father Could Do All Of This

He could do all of it, and you can do almost none of it.

That is how the sentence runs in you, and it has been running for a long time, and there is nobody available to check it against.

He fixed the car in the driveway. He took the back off a radio at the kitchen table with a cigarette going. He built the thing your mother still has. He never once looked anything up in his life, and he never once asked anybody for help that you saw.

And now he is not here, and the comparison cannot be closed. You cannot ask him how long that actually took. You cannot ask him how many times he got it wrong before you were born. You cannot ask him whether he was frightened the first time, because there is nobody to ask.

So the comparison runs forever, against a version of him that has been polished by memory for however many years it has been.

Let me put this down before anything else. Not knowing how is not a character flaw. And a man who is measured against a memory has been entered into a contest that cannot be won, because memories do not have bad afternoons in them.

He it is that doth go before thee

There is a sentence in Deuteronomy spoken to a man who was about to take over from somebody enormous.

And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed. (Deuteronomy 31:8, King James Version)

That was said to Joshua, who was following Moses. There has never been a harder act to follow in the history of the world, and everybody in that camp had known the previous man personally.

And notice what God does not say to him. He does not say you will be as good as Moses. He does not compare them at all. He changes the subject entirely, away from the man in front and onto Himself.

You have been handed a different subject rather than a better score, and following a man who could do everything has never once required matching him. Deuteronomy 31:8 answers a comparison by moving the ground rather than by settling it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as relief rather than as an evasion.

And look at the phrase goeth before thee. The one going in front is not your father any more. That position has been taken by somebody else, and it is a position your father also stood behind.

You are following the same One your father was following, and standing behind God rather than behind a man has never once been a demotion. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a person out of a contest they were never entered in, and it is written in Deuteronomy that the going before is God's own job and not a dead man's.

What the memory left out

Here is what is missing from the version of him that the comparison runs against, and it is worth listing.

Every job he did badly and did again. Every hour he spent standing there working out what to do next, which a nine year old in the next room never saw. Every time he asked somebody at work how a thing was done and then came home and did it as though he had always known.

And every single job he did in the years before there were any children in that house, when he was learning, which is the entire period during which a person is bad at things.

You met him at about forty. You are comparing your beginning to his middle.

You have been holding your first attempts beside a man's twentieth year, and a comparison with the wrong end of somebody's life has never once produced an honest number. It is written in Deuteronomy 31:8 that the one going before is God rather than a predecessor, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can take a memory down off a shelf and set it back at human height.

There is a second thing, and it is worth saying gently. He may not have been able to do all of it. Sons are famously unreliable witnesses about this. A child watching a father work sees competence, because a child cannot tell the difference between a man who knows and a man who is working it out with a confident face.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. He may well have done things nobody should do. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly, and if that means doing less than he did, then do less than he did.

You are entirely allowed to be more careful than your own father was, and refusing a job he would have attempted has never once been a failure to be his son. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man peace about that, and Scripture puts the going before in God's hands rather than in the hands of the man who went first.

Take four times as long

So here is the ask, and the second half of it is the whole medicine.

Do one job he would have done, and let it take you four times as long as it took him.

Pick something small that he would have handled without thinking. Then give yourself four times the time, out loud, before you start. This took him twenty minutes and I am giving it eighty.

You are able to take four times as long and get to the same place, and a slower route has never once produced a worse shelf. The Spirit of God is the one who removes a clock a man never agreed to, and Deuteronomy 31:8 answers a comparison by changing the subject rather than by winning it.

That instruction matters because the comparison is almost never about the outcome. It is about the speed and the ease. You could do most of what he did if the clock came off, and the clock is entirely imaginary and it was set by a nine year old.

So take it off deliberately. Say the number out loud. And then work at whatever speed you actually work at, with your phone beside you if you want it, looking things up as often as you need to.

You have permission to work slowly and to look things up while you do it, and needing information has never once been the opposite of being your father's son. It is written in Deuteronomy that the one who goes before will not fail nor forsake, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in that garage with you.