I Ask And They Say No

The last time, they did not look up.

That is the detail that stayed with you. Not the word. The word was fine, it was just no, and you have heard no plenty of times about plenty of things. It was that it came without any of the face turning toward you, delivered to a screen, in the tone somebody uses for a question they have already answered.

And you said all right, and went and did something in the kitchen.

That was three weeks ago and you have not asked since.

You did not decide to stop. There was no moment where you thought right, I will not put myself through that again. You just found that on the following evenings, when the thought arrived, something in you did not want to spend it, and so the thought went by without becoming a sentence.

That is the thing I want to work on. Not the child. You.

Because there is a very specific reason this hurts more than a no about tidying a room or getting off a screen, and it is worth naming plainly.

You were not asking them to do a task. You were asking them to be with you.

That is why a refusal lands where it lands. You made an offer of yourself, in the mildest and most deniable form available, disguised as a suggestion about going outside, and it was declined without a look. And now the asking has a cost attached, and you have quietly stopped paying it.

He shall gently lead

There is an image in Isaiah about how God moves people, and the specific mechanism in it is unusual.

He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. (Isaiah 40:11, King James Version)

And shall gently lead those that are with young.

Two words are doing the work: gently, and lead.

Gently is about force, and it is describing God, who has all of it available and is choosing the amount. That is worth sitting with when you are the parent of somebody who will not come, because the temptation is always toward more: more insistence, more explanation, a bit of guilt, a bribe.

But lead is the more useful word for you tonight.

Leading is not pushing and it is not pulling. Leading is going somewhere yourself, in a direction, at a speed the other one can manage, and remaining findable.

A shepherd with a slow ewe does not carry her and does not drive her. He goes, at her pace, and she follows because he is going and because it is possible to keep up.

And the detail about those that are with young is the reason the pace is slow. The pace is set by the one who cannot go fast, and the leader adjusts, and there is nothing in the passage about the slow ones being made to feel slow.

So what you have been doing is asking. What you have not been doing is going.

You are able to lead by going rather than by asking, and it has never once required them to say yes before you could start. Isaiah 40:11 sets the pace by the slowest and calls the leading gentle, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the fight out of a parent's evening.

An invitation with no cost to refuse

Here is the practical thing, and it is a change of shape rather than of effort.

Every time you ask, you create a moment where they have to decide, in front of you, whether to be with you or not. That is a heavy thing to hand a fourteen year old at half past seven on a Tuesday, and most of the time they will take the easy exit, which is no.

And notice what a no costs them. Nothing, in the moment. But they can see your face, and they are not stupid, and something small happens on their side too, and that accumulates in them the way it accumulates in you.

So stop making them decide.

Go and do it yourself, in view, and say nothing about it.

That converts the whole thing from an invitation into an open door. There is no question to answer. There is no moment where they have to look at you and refuse. There is simply a parent outside doing something ordinary, and a door that is not shut.

And the difference this makes is not psychological trickery. It is that joining something already happening costs almost nothing, and accepting an invitation costs quite a lot when you are that age and everything feels like a negotiation about who you are.

Some of them come out after four minutes. Some of them come out in three weeks. Some of them stand in the doorway and watch and go back in, and that is not nothing either.

You are able to leave a door open rather than put a question in front of them, and it has never once required a decision they had to make in front of you. The written word describes a leading that goes at the pace of the slowest, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a parent outside doing something alone.

Ten minutes, in view, and nothing said

So here is the assignment, and the last part is the hardest.

Go and do the ten minutes yourself where they can see you, and say nothing.

Pick something visible and ordinary. Walk up and down the yard. Throw a ball at a wall. Stretch on the front room floor with the door open. Put music on in the kitchen and move around while you cook.

Where they can see you. Not out of the house, because out of the house is invisible and invisible does not work. In view, ordinary, unremarkable.

And say nothing.

Do not announce it. Do not say I am going to do ten minutes if anybody wants to come. That is the invitation again in a thinner disguise and it produces the same refusal.

Do not comment afterward either. Do not say it was nice out, or you should have come, or I felt better for it. All of those are pressure arriving late, and a young person will hear every one of them for what it is.

Just do it, and stop, and get on with the evening as though nothing happened.

And if somebody appears, do not make anything of that. Do not say oh, you came. Say hello and carry on. The moment their coming out becomes an event, they will think twice about the second time.

You are able to do the thing yourself and say nothing about it afterward, and the commenting has never once been what brought anybody outside. Isaiah 40:11 describes gently leading rather than gathering an audience, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman throwing a ball at a wall on her own.