Do Not Tell Her It Was Meant To Be

You almost said it in the car.

She had gone quiet, and there was about a mile of silence to fill, and a sentence came up your throat the way sentences do when a good man wants to help, and it is never information: everything happens for a reason.

You did not say it, and there has been a quiet relief about that ever since about that ever since without being sure why, and I want to tell you why, because the relief is right and the reason for it is worth knowing.

The sentence would have solved your discomfort and not hers.

That is what those sentences do. They arrive in a car when the silence has become unbearable to the person driving, and they close the subject, and everybody is quieter afterward, and one of the two people has just been told something about God by somebody who does not actually know it.

And here is the thing about that particular sentence, and the family of sentences around it. None of them is information: God closed that door, this was not the plan, there is something better waiting.

Not one of them is a fact. Every one of them is a guess, delivered in the voice of somebody who has access.

The secret things belong unto the LORD

There is a verse in Deuteronomy that draws a line, and the line is the most useful thing in this whole article.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29, King James Version)

Two territories, and a border between them.

On one side: the secret things. What God is doing, why a particular thing happened in a particular year, the machinery behind events. That territory is His, and the verse says so without apology and without offering anybody a visa.

On the other side: what has been revealed. His character, His promises, what He has said about Himself, what He has told us to do. That territory belongs to us and to our children, permanently, and it is enormous.

You are standing on a whole country that was deeded to you and to your children for ever, and one closed territory has never once left a father with an empty side of the border. Deuteronomy 29:29 hands over everything on the revealed side without reservation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reminds a man what he is actually holding in a car.

You are standing on ground that is genuinely yours, and everything God has actually said has never once needed a guess about the machinery to be worth telling your daughter. Deuteronomy 29:29 gives away one territory and hands over the other, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a car with a man who nearly filled a silence.

Now look at what the verse implies about the sentence that came up your throat.

That sentence is not a report from this side of the border, because everything happens for a reason is a claim about the secret things. It reports on the machinery. And whatever else it is, it is a report from a territory that this verse says belongs to God, delivered by a man in a car on a Thursday.

That is not a small thing, and it is not pedantry, and here is why it matters. Nobody should tell a seventeen year old that God closed that door, because in eleven years, when something worse happens, she will be sitting somewhere working out what God is doing to her. You will have taught her to read events as messages, and events are cruel teachers.

You are able to refuse to speak for God about a thing He has not spoken about, and one honest silence has never once taught a young person less than a confident guess. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a father on his own ground, and the written word draws the border and gives the whole of the revealed side away.

What is actually in your hands

Now the good part, and it is much bigger than the part you have to give up.

Look again at what belongs to you and to your children for ever.

You cannot tell her why this happened. But you can tell her that God is good, because He has said so. You can tell her that He knows her name, because He said that too. You can tell her that nothing about her worth was decided in that office, because Scripture settles where worth is decided. You can tell her that He has not gone anywhere, because He said He would not.

That is not a consolation prize. That is a list of things that are actually true, that you actually know, that are not guesses about the machinery.

You are holding a whole territory that God handed to you and to your children for ever, and not knowing the why has never once left a father with nothing to say. Deuteronomy 29:29 gives the revealed things away permanently, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reminds a man what is actually in his hands in a car.

And here is the second thing, and it is the one that will matter to her most in about four years.

Saying the words I do not know why this happened hands her a model. It shows her, at seventeen, that a person can be a believer and have no explanation, and that the two things sit in the same body without either one collapsing.

That is one of the more valuable things a parent can hand a young person, and almost nobody hands it over, because it requires an adult to say the words I do not know out loud to a child.

A decision from an office is not a verdict from heaven.

You are able to be certain about God and uncertain about a year, and holding both of those at once has never once been a weaker faith than holding an explanation. Deuteronomy 29:29 separates the hidden from the revealed and calls both of them real, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man be honest and confident in the same sentence.

Say the two halves

So here is what to do, and it is two halves and the order is fixed.

Tell her that you do not know why this happened. Then tell her one thing about God that you do know.

First half, plainly: I do not know why this happened. No hedging, no maybe, no I am sure there is a reason. Just the true statement of what a man in a car on a Thursday does not have access to.

You are able to say the words I do not know to your own daughter, and an honest limit has never once made a father smaller in the eyes of a seventeen year old. The Holy Spirit is the one in the room when a man declines to speak for Him, and it is written in Deuteronomy 29:29 that the secret things belong to God.

Then the second half, and make it specific and make it one thing.

Not a summary of the faith. One thing. He has never once let go of you. Or: nothing that happened in that office changed what He thinks of you. Or: He knows your name and He knew it before any of this. One sentence, said with the whole of your certainty behind it, because that half is yours to say at full volume.

And that is the shape of it. Honest about the hidden, certain about the revealed, in the same breath, in the right order.

You are able to be uncertain and immovable inside one conversation, and two sentences in that order have never once been worth less than an explanation. Scripture divides the two territories in one verse and lets a man live confidently on the smaller side of the border, and the same Spirit who drew that line is in the car with you both.