The Keys on the Hook

They are on the hook by the door where they have been since 1991 and he can see them from the chair he sits in.

He is seventy-nine. There has not been an accident. There has been one occasion in October when he came off a road he has driven for fifty years slightly later than he meant to, and nothing happened, and nobody saw it, and he has thought about it perhaps two hundred times since.

His son has said nothing, which he appreciates and finds unbearable. His daughter has said something twice, gently, and he was short with her both times and has apologized for one of them.

What the keys actually are, and he knows this perfectly well and cannot say it out loud, is the difference between going to see his brother on a Thursday and waiting for somebody to have time to take him. It is the difference between deciding to go and asking. That is the whole of it, and it has nothing to do with driving.

So they hang there. And every day he looks at them and does not decide, and every day the not deciding costs him something, because he no longer drives anywhere he does not have to, which is its own answer arriving by a back route.

Anybody looking at a thing they will have to give up eventually knows this. And I want to say now that I am not going to tell anybody when to stop driving. I do not know his eyes, his reactions, his roads or his doctor. That belongs to him and to people who can actually assess it.

An umpire in the chest

Let me put down a line and look at the word underneath the English.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.Colossians 3:15

Rule there is a sporting word in the Greek. It means to act as umpire, to arbitrate, to be the one who makes the call when there is a question. Paul is not describing a general feeling of calm. He is describing a function.

That is a very specific thing to give a man looking at a set of keys. Not a feeling. An arbiter. Something appointed to settle a matter, sitting in the chest, given jurisdiction.

You are given peace as an arbiter rather than as an atmosphere, and it was appointed rather than earned. That is not a soft word for a man of seventy-nine. It is what is written in Colossians 3, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and puts it into a back kitchen in the late afternoon. The keys are metal on a hook. The umpire is God's peace.

And notice the phrase after it: to the which also ye are called in one body. Paul immediately puts the person in company. The peace is not a private arrangement between a man and his own head, and this is not a decision anybody was designed to make alone.

You were called into a body rather than into a solitary decision, and the verse puts those two in the same sentence. Colossians 3:15 is the text this sits on, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old letter land at a kitchen table.

Nobody is going to take the keys

Now the part this category exists for.

I am not going to tell him to stop, and I am not going to tell him to carry on. That is not evasion, it is accuracy: I have no idea, and anybody writing at a distance who confidently tells an older person what to do with their independence is making a decision about somebody else's life for free.

And I want to name what this is actually about, because I think the whole family has been discussing the wrong subject.

They think it is about safety. He knows it is about whether he decides to go and see his brother or asks somebody to take him. Those are two different conversations and only one of them has been happening out loud, which is why every attempt at it has gone badly.

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.Psalm 71:9

That verse exists because this fear is old and real and the Bible does not pretend otherwise. It does not tell the man not to feel it. It gives him words for it.

You were given language for this in Scripture itself, and asking not to be cast off is a prayer rather than a complaint. Psalm 71:9 is where the word puts it, and His Spirit is the one who lets a man say the frightening thing out loud without shame attached.

You are steady right now, in this kitchen, with the keys still on the hook and nothing settled. It is written that the peace of God is appointed to arbitrate in the heart, and it is the Spirit who makes that true in a man who has thought about one October afternoon two hundred times.

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 talk to a doctor about the driving and to a counselor about the rest of it. There is a medical part of this that belongs to a professional, and being at peace with God has never been a reason to work it out alone at a kitchen table.