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When I retired from the Los Angeles Police Department, I assumed the transition would be relatively easy. I’d spent thirty-five years as a police officer and detective, but I’d also maintained a parallel career as a professional writer, publishing novels and writing scripts for television and film. I wasn’t retiring into an empty calendar. I was simply going to stop being a detective and become a full-time writer. Somehow, it didn’t work quite the way I expected.

For years, my days had been filled with decisions involving people, investigations, and the demands of supervising a unit of thirty strong-willed detectives. The phone could ring in the middle of the night because something had happened and someone needed an answer. After retirement, the decisions became considerably quieter. Some mornings the most immediate question before me was what kind of breakfast cereal I wanted.

Writing remained meaningful, but it was solitary. Nobody was standing outside my office waiting for a decision, and nobody was calling because something had gone wrong. Without realizing it, I had spent decades receiving a steady stream of evidence telling me I was needed. Retirement removed much of that evidence almost overnight.

The experience is hardly unique to retirement. A young missionary comes home after eighteen months or two years of almost constant purpose. There has been a name tag, a companion, a schedule, people to teach, places to be, and a clear understanding of what the day is supposed to accomplish. Then the name tag comes off, and suddenly there are decisions about school, work, relationships, money, and whatever comes next. Somewhere beneath all those decisions may be a more unsettling question—Who am I now I am no longer a missionary?

Parents experience something similar when the nest empties. For years, children need rides, meals, advice, discipline, money, reassurance, and answers to questions large and small. Then those children grow up, which is precisely what we spent years hoping they would do. The calls become less frequent, and they begin making decisions without us. A parent who has spent decades being needed can suddenly find another question waiting in the quiet—Who am I now my children no longer need me in the same way?

Even recovery from alcohol or drug abuse can contain an unexpected version of the same difficulty. The substance may have been destructive, but it was also familiar. It may have filled a place in someone’s life as escape, routine, companionship, or a dependable response to distress. Removing it is necessary, but the empty space left behind can still be real. Recovery therefore involves more than learning how to live without the substance. It can also require confronting the question—Who am I now without something I once relied upon to get through life?

Sometimes difficult transitions are not difficult because we want our prior life back. They are difficult because we are still capable of being the person we are preparing to leave behind. A friend of mine, a surgeon and fellow Latter-day Saint, recently put the question more personally. He is approaching retirement while still possessing the skills that have defined much of his professional life. He is still capable, and his abilities remain in demand. His concern is not simply who he will be if he stops operating. It is also whether God will be disappointed in him if he steps away while still having stewardship over a talent he could use to help others.

These questions are harder to answer than they first appear. We often think of external validation as applause, compliments, awards, social media attention, or recognition. But validation can come in less obvious forms. It can come from responsibility, from being good at something others value, or simply from being the person people turn to when they need help. All of these can reassure us we are useful and needed. Over time, they become part of how we see ourselves.

Finding satisfaction in being useful or needed is natural. The difficulty comes when those experiences become how we determine our own worth. If being needed reassures us we matter, what happens when the need disappears? If our abilities help define who we are, what happens when circumstances change and we are no longer using them in the same way?

The distinction between usefulness and worth matters. We are encouraged to develop our talents, serve others, and make good use of the abilities God has given us. But none of those things determines our value to Him. Our usefulness may change from one season of life to another. Our divine identity does not.

Our Primary children love to sing I Am a Child of God. We even sing it as adults in sacrament meetings. In fact, we hear it so often we risk forgetting the meaning behind the words. Being a child of God is not another role we carry alongside missionary, parent, surgeon, teacher, detective, caregiver, bishop, stake president, or other Church leader. It is the identity underneath all of them.

Roles change, callings change, careers end, children grow up, and bodies become less capable. Gifts we once used daily may remain within us even when opportunities to use them disappear. Our worth does not rise and fall with those changes. If divine identity means what we believe it means, our value existed before any of those roles were given to us and remains eternally after they are gone.

This does not mean outside validation is unimportant. Appreciation feels good, being trusted feels good, and accomplishment should bring satisfaction. There is no virtue in pretending otherwise. But there is a profound difference between wanting our gifts to remain useful and needing their usefulness to reassure us we still matter.

Perhaps some of life’s quieter transitions invite us to discover whether we really believe what we have said for years. We are children of God before the missionary name tag goes on and after it comes off. We are children of God when people seek our advice and remain children of God when they stop asking. When our abilities are urgently needed, we are children of God, and we remain children of God when the midnight call-outs no longer come. And I have to remember I am a child of God even on the mornings when the most pressing question I face is what to have for breakfast.