If She Changes Now Will She Always

She told you on the Tuesday and by the Thursday she was forty.

That is what happened, and it happened in your head and nowhere else. By Thursday you were not thinking about a nineteen year old changing what she is doing. You were thinking about a woman of forty who has changed direction six times, who has no thread running through anything, who is always about to start something.

And by Friday you had started saying things to the girl at the table that were addressed to the woman at forty.

Have you thought about what happens if you get into a habit of this. What is the pattern here. How is this different from last time.

And she heard every one of those, and she has no idea what you are talking about, because she is nineteen and she has done this once.

Here is what I want to name before anything else. You are not being unreasonable and you are not catastrophizing for the sake of it. Every parent runs the projection. It is what love does when it can see far enough ahead to be frightened.

But there is a specific problem with a projection, and it is not that it might be wrong. It is that it cannot be argued with, because it has not happened, and a young woman defending herself against a future is defending herself against nothing at all.

He which hath begun a good work

There is a verse in Philippians about a work in progress, and the tense of it is the whole comfort.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6, King James Version)

Look at where the confidence is placed.

Not in the person. Not in their consistency, their track record, or their ability to stick at things. The confidence is in the one who began the work, and the sentence is built entirely on His character rather than on theirs.

You have a confidence that does not rest on your daughter's consistency, and a young woman changing direction has never once been able to interrupt something she did not begin. Philippians 1:6 puts the confidence in the one who started it, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen with somebody who has been talking to a woman of forty since Thursday.

And notice the word begun.

A begun work is a work in progress, which means it is unfinished, which means it currently looks unfinished, because that is what unfinished things look like from the inside and from beside them.

A nineteen year old changing course is exactly what a begun work looks like on a Tuesday in November. It is not evidence of anything going wrong. It is the ordinary appearance of something that is not done.

You are looking at an unfinished thing and reading it as a finished one, and a life in progress has never once been able to show a parent how it ends. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a mother which part of a life she is actually looking at, and the written word calls it begun and puts the performing in another hand.

What the projection costs her

Now the practical harm, and it is landing on her rather than on you.

She cannot defend herself against a future, so she defends herself against you.

That is the mechanism. You raise a pattern that does not exist yet, she has no evidence to offer because the evidence would have to come from years that have not happened, so the only move available to her is to insist that she is not like that, which sounds defensive, which confirms the projection to you.

That loop can run for a decade.

You are able to stop a loop that has nowhere to go, and a young woman with no evidence to offer has never once been a young woman who was avoiding the question. Philippians 1:6 places the confidence outside the person entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a family out of an argument about a year that does not exist.

And there is a second cost, and it is the one that will matter in five years.

If a nineteen year old learns that changing her mind produces this conversation, she will stop telling you when she changes her mind. Not stop changing it. Stop telling you.

And then at twenty six, when something genuinely important shifts, you will find out about it three months late from somebody else, and neither of you will be able to trace it back to a Tuesday in November when she was nineteen.

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

You are able to keep the channel open by staying in this year, and a projection raised once too often has never once made anybody more likely to tell you things. Philippians 1:6 keeps its attention on the one who began rather than on the one being worked on, and the Spirit of God is the one who protects a conversation that has not gone wrong yet.

Say one sentence about this year only

So here is the thing to do, and the constraint is the whole of it.

Say one sentence to her about the decision in front of her, with no reference to any year beyond this one.

Nothing about patterns. Nothing about habits. Nothing about what this might mean, might lead to, might become. One sentence about the actual decision, in the actual November, made by the actual girl at the table.

You are able to speak to the person in the room, and one sentence about this year has never once been a smaller contribution than a warning about ten of them. The Holy Spirit is the one at a table where a mother speaks to a nineteen year old rather than to a woman of forty, and it is written in Philippians 1:6 that the work was begun by somebody else and will be performed by Him.

And make the sentence useful. Something like: it sounds like the second year would be very different, is that right. Or: what would you want to be doing by the spring. Or simply: that makes sense to me.

Any of those keeps both of you inside a year that actually exists, and a year that exists can be discussed, and a discussion is the thing that has been unavailable since Thursday.

You are able to have a conversation instead of an argument, and a year that actually exists has never once been impossible to talk about. Scripture puts the confidence in the beginner of the work and lets the rest be unfinished, and the same Spirit who wrote that line is at your table when you keep the sentence inside November.