So, If you'll ever do the thing, if you'll ever do the thing

of a

if you'll ever do the thing

where you write up for yourself a little narrative turn of a phrase, a little kind of plot summary thing for a chapter of your life that's just closing or an episode that you went through and you're trying to make sense of it, you're trying to be at peace with it,

you've been grappling with it, you're kind of looking for that language that you can use

when you talk to yourself or even others about that particular chapter and then maybe

eventually you find the language you're like all right that's pretty much how I feel

about that. For example let's say you get to the end of a difficult time where you're very involved but you don't totally control the outcome of the situation and the whole thing's done and you're not totally satisfied with how it went but you feel like

you gave it your best shot you might say something like this well I think it

did everything I could there see those kind those kind of things, do you have those?

I've got a bunch of those in my life.

I feel like in the end of Nehemiah here, we're seeing a guy who is getting to that point

and who is developing his language for how to make sense of the rebuild Jerusalem, both the

walls and the people chapter of his life. He didn't totally control the outcome. I mean he had probably

more say in the outcome of this than pretty much anybody else in the world save maybe

Artazirkses himself. He's clearly not at peace with everything about how it worked out.

And so as we get to the very end of the book of Nehemiah, we can both figuratively and literally hear Nehemiah trying on language to make sense of what this was.

And I do think it's something to the effect of, well, I did my best and hopefully good things come out of it. Or, well, I conducted myself with

integrity, I made the best choices I possibly could.

It's beyond my control now.

It's kind of funny, he's just in here talking about it.

I'm running back through the chapters of my book

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