She Came Once And Never Again

She came out with you once. In April. On a Tuesday.

It was not planned. You were going out and she happened to be in the kitchen and she said she would come, and the two of you walked to the end of the road and back and she talked about somebody at school the whole way.

Nineteen minutes. You looked at the clock when you got in.

And you have thought about that Tuesday more than any adult should think about nineteen minutes.

Because it has not happened again. Not once, in five months. You have asked twice and got a no both times, and you have not asked since June.

Here is what that one Tuesday did to you, and it is worth naming because it is the actual problem.

Before April you thought she did not want to. That was manageable. That was a fact about a teenager and you could live inside it.

After April you know she will, sometimes, under conditions you cannot identify. Which means every no since has been a decision rather than a temperament, and every one of them has landed as a small specific rejection with a name on it.

So you have stopped asking, not because you gave up, but because it costs more now than it did before you knew.

He saw him a great way off

There is a father in Luke who is famous for running, and the part before the running is the part that matters here.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20, King James Version)

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck.

His father saw him a great way off. Think about what that means as a practical fact about how that man had been spending his days.

You have a father in this parable who was looking, repeatedly, over a long stretch of nothing, and Luke 15:20 has never once described that watching as foolish. The verse makes the seeing come first and the running second, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a parent looking at a road that has been empty for months.

You are able to picture the days that are not in the story. He saw him a great way off because he was in the habit of looking at that road, and the habit was formed over a long time in which nothing came down it at all.

Every one of those days was a day when the looking produced nothing.

And nothing in the passage suggests he was wasting his time, or that he should have been more realistic, or that his hope was setting him up for disappointment.

You are permitted to keep looking at a road that has produced nothing for five months, and Luke 15:20 has never once made that a sign that a parent has not accepted reality. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a heart open over a long stretch, and the parable puts the father at the window rather than out on the road fetching.

Which is the other half, and it is the crucial half. He saw him. He did not go and get him.

He did not go and fetch him

Here is the discipline in that story that nobody preaches.

That father never once went to the far country.

You are able to keep the door open without going out to drag anybody through it, and waiting has never once been the same thing as doing nothing. It is written that the father saw him while he was yet a great way off, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a parent from a rescue that would not have worked.

He could have. He had servants and he had means and he knew roughly where the boy was. Every instinct that a father has would have sent him after him.

He stayed, and he watched, and he ran only at the point where the boy was already coming.

And notice what the running was for. Not to fetch. The son was already on the road. The running was to close the last stretch faster, so that the boy did not have to walk the final distance alone with his speech in his mouth.

That is what the watching is for. Not to make it happen. To be ready to close the last stretch fast when it does.

You have a daughter who will come down a road one day at a time nobody can predict, and being visible when she does has never once been a passive thing to be. Luke 15:20 has the father seeing from a distance because he was looking, and the Spirit of God is the one who has the parent in the right place at the right moment.

Go out at the same time

So here is the assignment, and there is a small piece of design in it.

Go out at the same time you went out that Tuesday, and be visible from the house for ten minutes.

You are able to be findable rather than persuasive, and being in the same place at the same time has never once been the same as asking again. It is written that his father saw him a great way off, and the Holy Spirit is the one who arranges the meeting a parent could not arrange.

The same time matters more than you would think. Whatever it was, half past six, after the meal, before it gets dark. Households run on rhythm rather than on decisions, and a thing that happens at a predictable time can be joined without anybody having to make an announcement about joining it.

If she came once, it was because the conditions happened to be right. You cannot identify the conditions. But you can reproduce the time, and the time is one of them.

And be visible. The driveway, the front, the end of the road where you turn round. Somewhere a girl in a kitchen can see you without leaving the kitchen.

You have nothing to prove to her and nothing to secure from her, and standing where she can see you has never once required an invitation to be issued. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a young person to the door, and Luke 15:20 has the father seeing from a distance rather than knocking on one.

And when she comes, and this is the whole discipline of it, do not mention April.