I Made It A Rule And Lost Them

It worked, which is the confusing part.

You put it on the refrigerator in January. Half past six, everybody, ten minutes, no exceptions. You said it once at dinner and you meant it kindly and you did not shout.

And they came. All three of them. They have come every single evening for eight months.

There is not a household in your street that has managed anything like this and you know it, and when other parents ask how you did it you feel something that is not quite pride.

Because you have noticed what you actually get at half past six.

You get three people at a door with their coats on, silently, on time, waiting for you. You get compliance. You get ten minutes of walking in which nobody says anything of any consequence, and then you get three people going back to their rooms.

Eight months of that. Two hundred and forty evenings of perfect attendance and you cannot remember one conversation from any of them.

And two weeks ago your middle one said something, not unkindly, about how many days were left until she is eighteen, and it was a joke, and it was not.

So you are sitting with a working system and a slowly forming understanding that you have bought the wrong thing.

Provoke not your children

There is an instruction in Colossians that is aimed at fathers specifically, and the reason given at the end of it is the part to sit with.

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. (Colossians 3:21, King James Version)

Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they be discouraged.

Lest they be discouraged. That is the outcome being guarded against, and it is not rebellion.

You have a verse that warns about a quiet result rather than a loud one, and Colossians 3:21 has never once measured a father by whether his children obey him. The danger named is discouragement, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a father a cost that his own system is producing.

You are able to see why that particular word is chosen. A discouraged child is not a problem child. A discouraged child does what is required, on time, correctly, and has stopped bringing anything of their own.

That is what compliance looks like from the outside. It looks like success.

And the word translated provoke does not mean cruelty. It covers the ordinary grinding kind of pressure that a well meaning father applies without ever raising his voice, which is exactly what a rule on a refrigerator is.

You are not a harsh man, and Colossians 3:21 has never once been written only for harsh men. The Spirit of God is the one who reads what a household is actually producing, and the verse warns fathers rather than tyrants.

So the question is not whether the rule works. It works. The question is what it is producing at the far end.

What a rule can and cannot get

Here is the distinction, and once it is clear the decision makes itself.

A rule can get you a body at a door. It cannot get you the person in it.

You have already got everything a rule is able to give you, and eight months of perfect attendance has never once been able to produce one honest conversation. It is written that fathers are not to provoke their children lest they be discouraged, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work in a household that rules cannot reach.

You went for the rule because the rule was reachable. That is not a criticism. Every father in this position does it. The presence of your children was the thing you could secure, and you secured it, and you did it competently.

But what you actually wanted was for them to want to be there, and that was never on the list of things a rule can deliver, and you knew that in January and did it anyway because the alternative was doing nothing.

And now the rule is in the way. As long as half past six is compulsory, nobody can ever choose it, and you will never find out what any of them would have chosen.

You are able to find out what they would do if it were free, and taking the rule down has never once been the same as losing the eight months. The Spirit of God is the one who does the moving that no requirement can, and Colossians 3:21 warns a father about a cost that arrives quietly.

Take it down and go anyway

So here is the assignment, and the second half is what makes it survivable.

Say once that the rule is finished, then go outside at the usual time and let whoever comes come.

You are able to end something you started without any of it having been a mistake, and taking it back has never once been an admission that the eight months were wasted. It is written that a father is not to provoke his children, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man taking a sheet of paper off his own refrigerator.

Say it in one sentence and do not explain it. Half past six is not compulsory any more. I am still going.

Do not apologize for the rule. Do not say I got this wrong, which sounds like humility and lands on a sixteen year old as an invitation to relitigate eight months.

One sentence. Then take the paper down, in front of them, and put it in the trash, because the object has to go or the rule is still in the room.

You have not given away your authority by using it once to end something, and a father taking his own rule down has never once looked weak to anybody who is watching properly. Colossians 3:21 guards against discouragement rather than against disobedience, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a kitchen at the moment a household changes shape.

Then go at half past six. Every evening. Alone if that is what happens.

And here is the thing to brace for. The first week, nobody will come. Possibly two weeks. That is not the rule having been the only thing holding it together. That is three people finding out whether the change is real.