He Wants To Change What He Is Studying

He is not leaving. That is the first thing everybody says.

Your sister said it. Your wife said it, twice, in a tone that was mostly relief. And you have said it yourself about four times this week, and every time you say it something in you does not quite believe its own sentence.

Because he is not leaving, and yet the thing in your chest is exactly what would be there if he were.

You have been calling it, privately, a smaller version of the same problem. He wants to change what he is doing, and the change is legitimate and the reasons are decent, and underneath all that there is a quiet worry that goes: this is what it looks like when somebody starts to slide.

That is the sentence, is it not. The slide.

He changes this now, and something else next year, and by twenty five he is a man who changes things when they get difficult, and it all started here, in November, with a phone call that everybody said was fine.

Here is what I want to name at the start. You are not worried about the subject he is moving to. You have not asked one question about it. Every question this week has been about the thing he is leaving.

I put away childish things

There is a line in First Corinthians about growing up that people quote about maturity and rarely read as a description of change.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11, King James Version)

That is a description of somebody changing their mind about how they do things, and it is presented as the shape of growing up rather than as a failure of persistence.

And look at what got put away. Not toys. Speech, understanding, and thought. Three of the most fundamental things a person has, all revised, because the person doing the revising had become something different from what he was.

You are watching a revision and not a retreat, and a young man changing how he thinks has never once been a young man losing his nerve. First Corinthians 13:11 treats the putting away as the mark of growth rather than of weakness, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen with a father who has said the same sentence four times this week.

Now the part that speaks to the slide.

Read the verb. I put away. Active, deliberate, done by the man himself. This is not a description of things falling away from somebody who could not hold onto them. It is a person deciding, on purpose, that a way of operating no longer fits.

That is the exact opposite of a slide. A slide is passive. What is being described here is a decision.

You are able to tell a decision from a drift, and a change made on purpose has never once been the same thing as a person sliding. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a father which of the two he is actually looking at, and the written word puts the verb in the active voice and puts the man in charge of it.

The direction of your questions

Now the practical part, and it is entirely about where your attention has been pointed.

Every question this week has been backward.

Why does he not like it. What went wrong. Was it the workload, was it the people, did something happen. All of those are questions about the thing being left, and every one of them is reasonable, and together they add up to an investigation into a failure.

And he can hear that. A nineteen year old whose father asks eleven questions about what went wrong and none about what he is moving toward has learned exactly what his father thinks this is.

You are able to point your attention forward, and eleven questions about what went wrong have never once told anybody what a young man is walking into. First Corinthians 13:11 describes the putting away and immediately moves to what the man became, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a father's attention around.

And here is the second thing, and it is worth hearing plainly.

He has probably thought about this considerably more than anybody in this house has.

He has been living inside it every day since about the second week. He has had conversations with people who know the field. He has sat with it at two in the morning. And he came home with a great deal of work already done and none of it visible, because what arrived was a conclusion rather than the working.

A change of course is not a verdict on a young man.

You are being handed a conclusion from somebody who did the work, and a decision that arrives finished has never once been a decision that was made lightly. 1 Corinthians 13:11 puts the whole change into one line without showing the process, and the Spirit of God is the one who reminds a parent how much sits behind a short sentence.

Ask what he is moving toward

So here is the thing to do, and it is one question and a discipline.

Ask him what he wants to move toward. And stay on that question rather than on the one he is moving away from.

Ask it properly, with real interest, and then keep asking about that. What is it. What does it involve. Who told him about it. What is the part of it he is most looking forward to. What would a normal week in it look like.

You are able to ask about a destination rather than about an exit, and one forward question has never once been less useful than eleven backward ones. The Holy Spirit is the one at a table where a father asks about the next thing rather than the last one, and it is written in First Corinthians 13:11 that a man put away one way of being when he had become another.

And the discipline: stay there. Do not circle back.

Everything in you will want to return, once, to the thing he is leaving, just to satisfy yourself. Do not. He knows why he is leaving it. He has been over it more thoroughly than you can in one conversation, and going back to it tells him that the forward questions were a technique.

You are able to stay on the question you asked, and a father who does not circle back has never once been a father who stopped caring about the first thing. Scripture describes the change and moves straight on to the man, without a backward glance in the sentence, and the same Spirit who kept it moving is at the table when you stay forward.

And there is something you will discover doing this, which is why it is worth doing even if you remain unconvinced.

The answer comes back on its own. Not by asking whether he has thought about it, but by asking about the thing itself and listening to how much detail arrives. Somebody who has thought about it has detail. Somebody who is running has generalities. Four minutes will settle it, honestly, without one question that feels like an interrogation.

You are able to find out what you actually want to know without cross examining anybody, and four minutes of a young man talking freely have never once told a father less than an hour of questions. First Corinthians 13:11 moves from the putting away straight to the becoming, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a parent the truth without making a courtroom out of a kitchen.