The Goodbye Card Signed by Thirty Coworkers Who Haven't Texted Me Since
I found it this week while unpacking the last box from my office, a goodbye card with thirty signatures crammed onto two folded pages, each one promising something cheerful on the way out the door. Miss you already. Keep in touch. Let's grab coffee sometime. I retired three weeks ago after twenty-six years at the same company, and I had pictured this season as rest, finally, after decades of alarms and deadlines. What I had not pictured was sitting at my own kitchen table on a Tuesday afternoon with nowhere to be and nobody calling, holding a card from thirty people who meant every word they wrote and have not reached out once since.
I am seventeen years sober, and for most of those years I measured my worth by whether anybody needed me that day. Needed at work, needed by my sponsees, needed at the church men's breakfast I used to run. I told myself that was humility, serving people instead of chasing a drink. Looking back, some of it was just another way of avoiding the quiet, because a man who is always needed never has to sit alone long enough to ask himself who he is when nobody is asking anything of him. Retirement took that cover away in one afternoon, and the silence behind it has been louder than I expected.
Scripture does not treat that kind of aloneness as something a man simply has to outlast until the phone starts ringing again. David wrote from somewhere far more extreme than an empty kitchen, and he did not describe a God who shows up only once the isolation ends. "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-10, NKJV). I used to read that as poetry about God's size. Sitting with that card in my lap, I read it as something closer to a rescue, because the uttermost parts David names sound a great deal like a quiet house three weeks into a retirement nobody prepared me for.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once closed that gap by itself. I can tell myself accurately that people get busy, that thirty signatures were sincere even without the follow-through, that loneliness is a common part of any life transition. Every sentence is true, and none of them has made that kitchen feel less empty at two in the afternoon, because this was never a facts problem waiting on a kinder explanation. It is a belonging problem, and no tally of reasonable excuses for other people's silence has ever once filled a room by itself.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that thirty well-meaning signatures never could. Jesus did not tell His followers to simply manage their aloneness better once He was gone. He gave them an actual connection to stay inside of. "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, NKJV). A branch does not stay alive by remembering that the vine once cared about it. It stays alive by staying attached, today, in this exact afternoon, not by waiting on a text that may never come.
Zephaniah hands me something I did not expect to need this week, a God who is not merely present but glad about it. "The LORD your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17, NKJV). I have spent so many years assuming I had to earn that kind of gladness by staying useful to somebody. He is not waiting for my next contribution before He rejoices over me. He already is.
I watch a world right now that seems built to make this ache worse, offices emptying into screens, neighborhoods where nobody learns a name, algorithms designed to keep us scrolling instead of sitting across a table from someone. I do not think that drift toward isolation is accidental, and I believe it belongs to the kind of age Scripture told us to expect before Christ returns for good. But I take real comfort in the promise He left before He ascended, a promise that does not expire when a coworker stops texting. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20, NKJV). Always was never contingent on anyone else keeping their word.
I put that card back in the box this afternoon, not because it stopped mattering, but because I finally stopped needing it to be the thing that proves I am not alone. Peter tells me where the actual weight belongs instead. "Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7, NKJV).
If your own house has gone quieter than you expected, and the people who promised to keep in touch have not yet, know this. God is alive, and He already knows exactly which card is sitting in your lap today. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on anyone else remembering to call, and a peace that goes further than any kept promise from a coworker ever could. He will never leave you at that kitchen table alone, not this afternoon, and not on the morning He finally comes to gather every one of us home for good.
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 139:7-10; John 15:5; Zephaniah 3:17; Matthew 28:20; 1 Peter 5:7.
I am seventeen years sober, and for most of those years I measured my worth by whether anybody needed me that day. Needed at work, needed by my sponsees, needed at the church men's breakfast I used to run. I told myself that was humility, serving people instead of chasing a drink. Looking back, some of it was just another way of avoiding the quiet, because a man who is always needed never has to sit alone long enough to ask himself who he is when nobody is asking anything of him. Retirement took that cover away in one afternoon, and the silence behind it has been louder than I expected.
Scripture does not treat that kind of aloneness as something a man simply has to outlast until the phone starts ringing again. David wrote from somewhere far more extreme than an empty kitchen, and he did not describe a God who shows up only once the isolation ends. "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 139:7-10, NKJV). I used to read that as poetry about God's size. Sitting with that card in my lap, I read it as something closer to a rescue, because the uttermost parts David names sound a great deal like a quiet house three weeks into a retirement nobody prepared me for.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once closed that gap by itself. I can tell myself accurately that people get busy, that thirty signatures were sincere even without the follow-through, that loneliness is a common part of any life transition. Every sentence is true, and none of them has made that kitchen feel less empty at two in the afternoon, because this was never a facts problem waiting on a kinder explanation. It is a belonging problem, and no tally of reasonable excuses for other people's silence has ever once filled a room by itself.
This is exactly what abiding in the Spirit offers that thirty well-meaning signatures never could. Jesus did not tell His followers to simply manage their aloneness better once He was gone. He gave them an actual connection to stay inside of. "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:5, NKJV). A branch does not stay alive by remembering that the vine once cared about it. It stays alive by staying attached, today, in this exact afternoon, not by waiting on a text that may never come.
Zephaniah hands me something I did not expect to need this week, a God who is not merely present but glad about it. "The LORD your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17, NKJV). I have spent so many years assuming I had to earn that kind of gladness by staying useful to somebody. He is not waiting for my next contribution before He rejoices over me. He already is.
I watch a world right now that seems built to make this ache worse, offices emptying into screens, neighborhoods where nobody learns a name, algorithms designed to keep us scrolling instead of sitting across a table from someone. I do not think that drift toward isolation is accidental, and I believe it belongs to the kind of age Scripture told us to expect before Christ returns for good. But I take real comfort in the promise He left before He ascended, a promise that does not expire when a coworker stops texting. "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20, NKJV). Always was never contingent on anyone else keeping their word.
I put that card back in the box this afternoon, not because it stopped mattering, but because I finally stopped needing it to be the thing that proves I am not alone. Peter tells me where the actual weight belongs instead. "Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7, NKJV).
If your own house has gone quieter than you expected, and the people who promised to keep in touch have not yet, know this. God is alive, and He already knows exactly which card is sitting in your lap today. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on anyone else remembering to call, and a peace that goes further than any kept promise from a coworker ever could. He will never leave you at that kitchen table alone, not this afternoon, and not on the morning He finally comes to gather every one of us home for good.
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Psalm 139:7-10; John 15:5; Zephaniah 3:17; Matthew 28:20; 1 Peter 5:7.
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