What We Cannot Finish

She died in May. I found out last week. She was a parishioner from my former church, a woman I loved and prayed with, whose story is woven into mine. I always thought I would be the one who stood at her graveside, told the stories, named her love out loud, and gave her back to God.

But I wasn’t.

That honor belonged to another pastor, as it should. And still, I felt the sharpness of what I could not finish.

It would be easy to say this is a pastor’s problem—that clergy imagine themselves closing the circles they’ve opened, sending people home the way we once promised to. But the truth is, this ache isn’t just a pastoral one. It’s a human one.

We all live with things we cannot finish. The letter we never sent. The words we left unsaid. The project we started with excitement and then abandoned halfway through the winter. The friend we always meant to call back, and then didn’t. The relationship that didn’t get closure, just silence. The prayers we whispered for people that we’ll never know how to carry across the finish line.

Unfinishedness dogs us everywhere. Some of it is trivial—the half-knitted scarf, the weeds in the garden. Some of it keeps us awake at night—the apology that never left our lips, the healing that never happened, the goodbyes we never got to speak.

The temptation is to believe that unfinished means failed. That if we had been better, stronger, more faithful, more disciplined, we would have tied up all the loose ends and left nothing undone. But life just isn’t like that. Life is full of loose threads.

Maybe the point is not to finish everything, but to trust that unfinished doesn’t mean abandoned. What we cannot finish, God still holds. What we cannot resolve, Love still carries. What we cannot complete, grace still gathers up.

So I am trying to bless the unfinished. To hold it in open hands, instead of clenched fists. To trust that circles close in ways I may never see. And to believe that even what is left undone can still be holy.

Because at the end of the day, none of us finishes our stories on our own. Someone else will always pick up where we leave off. And maybe that’s the quiet mercy of being human: The work, the love, the prayers, the care—none of it begins or ends with us.

So this week, friends, I encourage you to notice what you’ve left unfinished—not with shame, but with gentleness. Let it remind you that you are human, not a machine. Bless the loose ends instead of cursing them. Trust that what you cannot complete is still held in God, still part of a bigger story. And then keep living, keep loving, keep showing up, even when the ending isn’t yours to write.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa

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