I Have Rehearsed Telling Them

The version in the shower is excellent.

It is calm. It has three good reasons in it, in a sensible order. It anticipates the two things your father is going to say and it has answers ready for both, and it ends on a note that is respectful without being apologetic.

You have run it about forty times. It gets slightly better each time.

And you have not said one word of it out loud to either of them, and you decided this three weeks ago on a Tuesday.

Here is what I want to say to you first, because I think it will land before anything else does: the reason you have not said it is not that you have not found the right words. You found the right words in about week one. You have been polishing since then for a different reason entirely, and the reason is that as long as it is being rehearsed, it has not happened.

The shower version is safe. Everybody in it behaves well. Your father says the thing you expected and you produce the answer you prepared and it goes about as well as it could go.

The real one has faces in it.

A word spoken in due season

There is a proverb about timing that is more encouraging than it looks.

A man hath joy by the answer of his mouth: and a word spoken in due season, how good is it! (Proverbs 15:23, King James Version)

Two halves and they belong together.

The first half says something almost nobody expects: that a man has joy by the answer of his mouth. Joy. Not relief, not duty discharged. Joy, from the thing he actually said out loud.

That is not a description of the shower version. The shower version produces no joy at all, because nothing said in a shower has ever been an answer to anybody.

You are built to find something in the saying of it, and forty rehearsals have never once produced one ounce of what one real sentence produces. The Holy Spirit is the one in a bathroom with somebody running version forty one, and Proverbs 15:23 attaches the joy to the answer of a mouth rather than to the quality of the phrasing.

And the second half: a word spoken in due season, how good is it.

Due season. There is a right time, and the proverb treats it as a real thing that can be hit or missed. And here is the practical fact about your situation: the due season for this passed somewhere around week two, and every week since has made the sentence heavier without making it better.

You have a word that is ready and a season that is passing, and three weeks of polishing have never once improved a sentence that was already finished. The written word puts a value on timing rather than on preparation, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a young man that the drafting is over.

The face is the whole difficulty

Now let me say the true thing about what is actually stopping you, because it is not the words.

It is your father's face.

Not his anger. Being shouted at is not the fear here, and he probably will not shout. It is the specific expression that will happen in the first second, before he has had time to arrange it, and it will be some combination of disappointment and worry and the effort of not showing either.

And you will see it, and you will remember it, and you have been protecting yourself from that half second for three weeks.

You are afraid of half a second and not of a conversation, and one unguarded expression has never once been the whole of what a father feels. Proverbs 15:23 attaches joy to the answer of the mouth without ever promising a reaction, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in a kitchen in the half second before anybody has arranged anything.

And here is the thing about that face that nobody tells a nineteen year old.

What you will see in it is not a verdict on you. It is a man doing arithmetic at speed: what this means, what has to change, what he needs to handle, how his son is doing. That takes a couple of seconds and it looks like disappointment from the outside because a face doing rapid work looks like a face doing rapid work.

Wait four seconds. The face at second five is different from the face at second one, and the face at second five is the one that means something.

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

You are able to wait four seconds before reading anything, and the first expression on a father's face has never once been the sentence he was about to say. The Spirit of God is the one in the five seconds after somebody finally says it, and Proverbs 15:23 puts the value on the word being spoken rather than on how it is received.

Say it first, before the reasons

So here is how to do it, and the structure is the opposite of the shower version.

Say the decision in one sentence, at the start of the conversation, before any of the reasons.

The shower version builds. Reasons first, then the conclusion, so that by the time they hear it they will already understand. That structure feels safer and it is the single worst thing you could do.

Here is why. Reasons first means they spend the whole build-up not knowing where this is going, and then when the conclusion lands it arrives on top of an argument, and the entire thing sounds like a case being made. Which invites a counter case. Which is the negotiation you have been dreading.

You are telling them a decision and not making a case, and a sentence that arrives first has never once been the same thing as an argument. It is written in Proverbs 15:23 that a word spoken in due season is a good thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen where somebody leads with the true sentence.

Decision first, in one sentence, plainly. I have decided to leave and I wanted to tell you myself.

Then stop, and let them react, and only give the reasons if they ask for them, which they will, but they will ask from a completely different position: as people who have been told something by an adult, rather than as people being argued at by a boy.

You are able to be told from rather than argued at, and one plain sentence at the start has never once been less respectful than three reasons and a conclusion. Scripture puts joy in the answer of a mouth and never once in the arrangement of the argument, and the same Spirit who wrote that line is standing in the kitchen when you lead with it.