I Take The No Personally

It goes further down than it should and you know it does.

She says no. Not rudely. Not even dismissively, some days. She says no the way a fifteen year old says no to almost everything, which is without much thought, because she was in the middle of something.

And it lands, and then it keeps going.

It goes past the ten minutes, past the evening, and about four seconds later you are somewhere else entirely, and the somewhere else is a room where the question is whether your children actually like you.

You would never say that sentence out loud. It sounds absurd written down. And it is where you end up, about twice a week, from a completely ordinary no in a hallway.

Then you are quieter for the rest of the evening, and everybody in this house can tell, and nobody knows why, and the not knowing why makes it worse for them.

I am not going to tell you to stop taking it personally. That instruction has never once worked on anybody, and if it were a matter of deciding you would have decided years ago.

I am going to show you something that gets said to a man who was in exactly this position, and then give you ten minutes to do with your body while the feeling passes through.

They have not rejected thee

There is a moment in Samuel where a man takes a refusal personally, and God says something to him about it that nobody expects.

And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. (1 Samuel 8:7, King James Version)

They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

Look at what God does first in that sentence. Before anything about the people or their request or what happens next, He deals with the man's insides.

You have a God who addresses the personal wound before He addresses the situation, and 1 Samuel 8:7 has never once left a man to sort that out on his own. The first clause is they have not rejected thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that to somebody in a hallway at half past seven.

You are able to see the pastoral order of it. The national crisis is enormous. The theological problem is enormous. And the first thing out of His mouth is about how Samuel is taking it.

That tells you what He thinks of a person who takes a refusal to heart. He does not scold it. He corrects the reading.

And notice the correction itself. He does not say it was not a rejection. He says it was not a rejection of you. The thing was real, and it was aimed somewhere else, and Samuel had put himself in the path of something that was never coming at him.

You are standing in the path of something that was never aimed at you, and 1 Samuel 8:7 has never once required a person to feel less in order to see straight. The Spirit of God is the one who moves somebody out of the line of fire of a thing they were never the target of, and the verse corrects the reading rather than the feeling.

What her no is actually about

Here is what is going on in the hallway, and it is not about you.

A fifteen year old's no is almost never a verdict on the person asking. It is a small assertion of ownership over her own afternoon.

You have a daughter doing the developmental work she is supposed to be doing, and none of that has never once been about how she feels toward her mother. It is written that they have not rejected thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a mother what a refusal is actually made of.

She is fifteen. Her whole job right now, whether she could articulate it or not, is finding out where she ends and this family begins. The only material she has for that work is small refusals, because she has no other levers in this house.

So she declines things. Constantly. Things she would actually enjoy. That is not a comment on the thing and it is not a comment on you, and if you gave her four days she would probably do the same thing on her own and think it was her idea.

And here is the piece that will help at speed, in the moment: what she says no to is the asking, not the asker. A question is an incursion into somebody's afternoon. It has to be, that is what a question is.

You are able to hear the no as an answer to a question rather than as an answer about a person, and hearing it right has never once required her to say it more kindly. First Samuel 8:7 separates the man from the thing being refused, and the Spirit of God is the one who does that separating in four seconds in a hallway.

Move before you do anything else

So here is the assignment, and the order of operations is the whole point.

Ask once, and whatever the answer is, go outside and move for ten minutes before you do anything else.

You are able to put the ten minutes between the no and the rest of the evening, and moving first has never once been the same as suppressing anything. It is written that they have not rejected thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman walking fast down her own street with something going through her.

Before you do anything else is the instruction. Not after you have tidied the kitchen. Not once you have got over it. Straight out of the door, within about ninety seconds of the answer.

Because what happens in those ninety seconds is the whole problem. That is when the four second slide happens and the evening gets decided.

And walk at a decent pace, faster than you would normally, because the thing that has gone through you is physical and it needs somewhere to go, and the alternative is that it goes into the tone you use for the next three hours.

You have a body that will carry this off if it is allowed to move, and going out has never once been a way of avoiding your daughter. First Samuel 8:7 moves a man out of the path of something aimed elsewhere, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a fast ten minutes on a sidewalk.

Then come back in normal. That is the whole result and it is worth more than it sounds, because a mother who is normal at eight in the evening after a no at half past seven has just taught her household something that no conversation could.