He Wants To Leave And I Do Not Know What To Say

It turned at about the four minute mark.

For the first four minutes it was a conversation. He was telling you something difficult, in a slightly rehearsed way, and you were listening, and it was going as well as a conversation like that can go.

And then he said the word leave, and something in you moved before you had decided anything.

You said: let us not do anything hasty. Which is a perfectly reasonable sentence, and it is also the sentence that ended the conversation, because he heard it as the opening of a negotiation and he stopped telling you things and started defending a position.

The last six minutes were an argument with a polite surface on it.

That was Sunday. It is now Wednesday and you have replayed those four minutes about thirty times, and you have arrived nowhere, because the question you keep asking yourself is the wrong question.

The question you keep asking is: should he stay or should he go.

Here is what I want to say before anything else. That is not your question. It was never going to be your question, you are not going to be the one who answers it, and every minute you spend on it is a minute not spent on the thing that is actually yours.

Every purpose is established by counsel

There is a proverb about decisions that is doing something more precise than it first appears.

Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war. (Proverbs 20:18, King James Version)

Look at what counsel does in that sentence. It establishes a purpose. It does not supply one.

The purpose belongs to the person who has it. Counsel is the thing that tests it, steadies it, and sets it on something solid. And the proverb assumes throughout that the one making the decision and the one giving the counsel are two different people, and that this is the correct arrangement rather than a failure of one of them.

You are the counsel and not the decision, and a father with a real part to play has never once needed to be the one who chooses. Proverbs 20:18 separates the counsel from the purpose it establishes, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a house on the Wednesday after a phone call.

Now the second half, which is where most of the comfort is.

With good advice make war. Note what is being described: a genuinely serious decision, with real consequences, taken by somebody who is going to live with it. And the instruction is not that somebody else should make the decision for them. It is that the decision should be well counseled.

Which means the highest possible outcome here is not that he does the right thing. It is that he decides well, with a father who helped him think.

You are able to aim at a well made decision rather than at a particular one, and helping somebody think has never once been a lesser job than telling them what to do. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a parent what his actual job is, and the written word puts counsel alongside a serious decision without ever transferring the decision.

What happened at four minutes

Now let me go back to Sunday, because the mechanism is worth seeing.

At the four minute mark, he handed you something, and what he handed you was not a proposal. It was the beginning of thinking out loud in front of his father, which is a very large amount of trust from a nineteen year old.

And what came back was a position. Let us not do anything hasty is a position, however gently it is delivered, and the moment a position appears, the other person stops thinking and starts negotiating.

That is not a failure of love. It is what happens when somebody we love says a word that frightens us.

You are a father who moved before he had decided anything, and one reflex at the four minute mark has never once been a measure of how well you love your son. Proverbs 20:18 keeps the counsel beside the purpose rather than in front of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who slows a good man down at the exact place he speeds up.

You are able to receive a thought without answering it, and a young man thinking out loud has never once been a young man asking for a verdict. Proverbs 20:18 has counsel establishing a purpose rather than replacing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who slows a father down at the four minute mark.

And here is the specific thing that got lost when the conversation turned, which is the real cost of Sunday.

You never found out what he actually meant.

Leave is a word that covers about nine different situations. It might mean he is unhappy. It might mean he is homesick and has attached the feeling to a decision. It might mean the specific thing he is doing is wrong and something adjacent to it is right. It might mean he has already decided and is telling you. It might mean he is frightened and wants to be talked out of it.

Every one of those needs a different response, and there is no way to know which one it is, because the conversation stopped at minute four.

You are short of information and not short of love, and a conversation that ended early has never once been a conversation that cannot be started again. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a father back the question that was actually his, and Proverbs 20:18 has counsel establishing a purpose rather than supplying one.

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

You are missing information and not authority, and four minutes of a phone call have never once been enough to know which of nine things somebody meant. Proverbs 20:18 assumes a decision belongs to the one who has to live with it, and the Spirit of God is the one who returns a father to the thing he can actually do.

Ask, and then be quiet for a minute

So here is the thing to do, and the second half is where it lives or dies.

Ask him one open question about it. And then say nothing at all for a full minute by the clock.

The question has to be genuinely open, which means it cannot have an answer hidden in it. Not: have you thought about what happens if. Not: are you sure this is not just. Those are positions wearing question marks.

Ask: what is it actually like there. Or: what would have to be different. Or simply: tell me more about it.

You are able to ask a question with nothing loaded inside it, and one open question has never once been the same thing as an argument in disguise. It is written in Proverbs 20:18 that every purpose is established by counsel, and the Holy Spirit is the one on a phone call where a father asks something without an answer inside it.

Then the minute. Actually a minute. Look at a clock if you have to.

A minute is an extremely long time in a conversation and you will want to fill it at about eleven seconds. Do not. Because the first thing a nineteen year old says is the rehearsed thing, and the real thing arrives somewhere in the second half of that minute, and it only arrives if the space is still there when it turns up.

You are able to leave a silence open long enough for the second answer, and eleven seconds of discomfort have never once been too expensive to buy the sentence underneath. Scripture puts the counsel alongside the decision and never once puts it in front, and the same Spirit who set that order is on the call while you wait.