My Father's Things Are Still In Boxes

They have been stacked in that garage for four years.

Four or five boxes, taped, with his handwriting on two of them because he had labeled them himself before he died. You know roughly what is in each one. You have not opened any of them.

And it is not avoidance in the way that word usually means. You have thought about it about a hundred times, deliberately, in the way a man thinks about a job that needs doing.

The reason it has not happened is more specific than avoidance.

Opening a box means deciding about what is in it. And deciding about a dead man's things means sorting them into keep and not keep, and not keep means getting rid of some of your father, and there is no version of that afternoon that anybody would volunteer for.

So the boxes stay taped. And that is not a failure. Given the two options as you have framed them, taped is the better one.

But there is a third option and nobody has offered it to you, and it is the whole of this article.

You can open a box and take out one thing and close it again.

Bring the cloak and the books

There is a line near the end of Paul's last letter that is almost startlingly ordinary, and that is exactly why it is here.

The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments. (2 Timothy 4:13, King James Version)

A coat. Some books. A man near the end of his life asking for his own things.

You are looking at something Scripture treats as worth writing down, and a man's ordinary belongings have never once been beneath the attention of the word of God. 2 Timothy 4:13 puts a coat and some books into an inspired letter, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man standing in a garage.

Now look at what he asks for and what he does not.

He does not ask for the collection to be catalogued. He does not ask for a decision to be made about the whole of it. He names three things and asks for them to be brought.

That is a man in his final months asking for specific objects because he wants them with him, and there is no sorting anywhere in that verse.

You have a model in Scripture of asking for one thing rather than settling everything, and a specific object has never once required a whole collection to be dealt with first. The Spirit of God is the one who moved a man to ask for a coat by name, and it is written in 2 Timothy 4:13 that he wanted the books and especially the parchments and said nothing about the rest.

Opening is not sorting

Now the distinction, and it is the only thing I came to say.

Opening a box is not sorting a box.

That has been welded together in your head for four years and it does not have to be. You can cut the tape, look in, take out one thing, close the box, and put it back on the stack. Nothing has been decided. Nothing has been thrown away. The box is exactly as full as it was minus one item, and the item is now in your house.

That is a complete action. It is not a first step toward a decision you are dreading. It stands on its own and it does not commit you to anything.

You are able to open something without settling it, and taking one thing out has never once obliged anybody to sort the rest. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates two things that got welded together, and 2 Timothy 4:13 has a man ask for three specific items and say nothing about the whole.

And here is what four years of taped boxes has actually cost, and it is not about the boxes.

Your father is currently entirely in storage. There is nothing of his in the house you live in. And so he is somewhere you go to think about rather than somebody present in an ordinary week, and those are very different arrangements.

A thing of his in use in your kitchen is not a memorial. It is a presence. It is him being ordinary again, in the way he was ordinary for the whole of your life until four years ago, and that is closer to having a father than a stack in a garage.

You are able to have him present rather than stored, and a man's tools in a box have never once been closer to him than one of them in a hand. The Spirit of God is the one present in an object in daily use, and it is written in 2 Timothy 4:13 that a man wanted his own coat brought to him.

And this, plainly, in these words. Those boxes are not a report on you. Not on how much you loved him, not on how you have handled it, not on whether four years is too long. A stack of taped boxes is not a verdict on the man who has not opened them, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in the garage.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a garage, and four years of taped boxes has never once been a measure of anything except how hard it was. 2 Timothy 4:13 records a request for ordinary objects in 2 Timothy 4, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the garage with you.

One thing out, and close it again

So here is the assignment, and the closing it again is as important as the opening.

Open one of your father's boxes tonight, take out one thing, and put it where you will use it or see it every day.

One box. The one that is easiest, or the top one, and do not pick carefully.

Cut the tape. Look in. That will be a moment and there is no way around it.

You are able to look into a box without agreeing to sort it, and cutting one piece of tape has never once been a decision about anything. The Holy Spirit is the one in the garage with a man cutting tape after four years, and 2 Timothy 4:13 has a man ask for a coat and some books by name.

Take out one thing. Something you would use, or something you would see. A tool. A mug. A book. Whatever your hand goes to.

Then close the box. Put it back on the stack. Walk out of the garage.

That is the whole assignment and the box being closed again is not a failure of nerve. It is the design. The box was never tonight's problem.

And then put the one thing where it belongs in your actual life. In the drawer with your own tools. In the kitchen. On the shelf. Where it will be used or seen every day rather than looked at on purpose.

You are putting one of his things into your ordinary week, and a tool in a drawer has never once been a smaller way to have a father than a box in a garage. The Spirit of God is the one present in an object that gets picked up without ceremony, and it is written in 2 Timothy 4:13 that the coat and the books were asked for because a man wanted them with him.