He Does Not Want To Talk About It

The subject closed on the second day and it has stayed closed.

He said one thing about it on the Friday evening, in about nine words, and then he said that he did not want to talk about it, and he has meant that consistently ever since.

And every day since then there has been an attempt.

They are small. They are not interrogations. It is: how are you doing. It is: have you thought any more about. It is putting a cup down beside him and standing there half a second longer than a cup requires. It is asking about something else and steering toward it and then losing your nerve at the last moment.

He knows exactly what each of these is. He has developed a very short answer for all of them, which is: yeah, fine.

Eleven days of that.

And here is what I want to say before anything else, because it is not what anybody would say to you: you are not failing to reach him. You are doing something that does not work, which is a completely different thing, and it is not a shortage of love and it is not a lack of skill.

You are doing what people do. When somebody we love shuts a door, we knock. It is the most natural thing available.

None spake a word unto him

There is a verse in Job that describes the single best piece of pastoral care in the entire book, and it is done by three men who go on to get everything else wrong.

So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great. (Job 2:13, King James Version)

Seven days. Nobody said anything.

And notice the reason given for the silence. Not that they had nothing to say. Not that they were being tactful. For they saw that his grief was very great, which means the silence was a response to what they were looking at, and it was a decision rather than an absence.

You are able to be with somebody without saying one word, and a silence chosen on purpose has never once been the same thing as having nothing to offer. Job 2:13 records seven days of speech withheld as the response of men who were actually paying attention, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a living room with somebody putting a cup down.

Now, and this is worth sitting with: everything those three men are famous for going wrong comes later, and it starts the moment they open their mouths.

The part of that story that is held up, the part nobody criticizes, is the week when they simply sat on the ground beside him.

You have the best available option already in your hands, and being in the room has never once needed a sentence attached to make it count. The written word praises the sitting and not the speaking, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a room where nothing is being said.

What the knocking is doing

Now the practical part, and it is uncomfortable but it is fixable in about a day.

Each small attempt costs him something.

Every "how are you doing" requires a response. Which means he has to decide, eleven times a week, whether this is the moment, and each time he decides it is not, and each decision costs a small amount of energy and produces a small amount of guilt, because he can see that his mother is trying and he is turning her away.

So the attempts, which are pure love, are landing as a series of small demands.

You are able to stop asking him to decide eleven times a week, and a question offered in love has never once stopped being a question that has to be answered. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a mother what her kindness is costing on the other end, and Job 2:13 has three men declining to put anything to a man who was in the middle of something.

And there is a second thing, and it is the one that explains why he will not open the subject with you specifically.

He is nineteen and he is managing his own disappointment, and on top of that he can see yours. He knows this landed on you. He knows there is a version of this conversation where he ends up looking after his mother, and he has neither the equipment nor the energy for that, so he keeps the door shut, and the door being shut is partly a kindness to you.

A decision about an application is not a verdict on him or on you.

You are being protected by a nineteen year old, and a closed subject has never once meant that a young person stopped loving the people around him. Job 2:13 puts three men beside a suffering friend without requiring anything of him, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a mother what a shut door in her own house is actually made of.

Sit in the room and say nothing

So here is the thing to do, and it is going to feel like giving up and it is the opposite.

Sit in the same room as him for twenty minutes this week without raising the subject once. And let the silence be the whole of it.

Twenty minutes. Same room. Something ordinary going on: a film, the football, both of you on your phones, whatever the room does.

And do not raise it. Not at minute eighteen when the silence has become almost unbearable to you, which it will. Not on the way out of the room, which is where these things traditionally escape.

You are able to be in the room without asking him for anything, and twenty minutes of ordinary company have never once been a smaller gift than a conversation. It is written in Job 2:13 that they sat with him and none spake a word, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a living room where a mother has decided to say nothing at all.

Here is what those twenty minutes tell him, without a single word being used.

They tell him that his mother can be near him without needing anything. Which means the room is safe. Which means that at some point, possibly in three weeks, possibly in a car, possibly at eleven at night when he is going through the fridge, he will start talking, because the safest place in the world to say a hard thing is beside somebody who has proved they can sit still.

The knocking makes a door. The sitting makes a room.

You are building a place where he can speak later, and a week of quiet company has never once been time that was wasted waiting. Scripture reports seven days of silence as the thing those men got right, and the same Spirit who kept that verse in the book is in the twenty minutes you are about to spend saying nothing.