My Questions Are Arguments

She stopped telling you things somewhere around the middle of October.

Not dramatically. There was no row. It is simply that in August she used to say things without being asked, and by November everything you know comes from a question, and the answers to the questions have got shorter.

And you have been putting it down to her being busy, and to nineteen, and to distance.

Then last Tuesday you asked her a question and heard yourself do it, and something dropped, because you knew before she answered exactly what you wanted the answer to be, and you had a follow up ready for the version you did not want.

That is not a question. That is a move.

And once you noticed one, you noticed the rest. Have you thought about how that fits with. Is that definitely what they said. Do you not think it would be better to. Every one of them a small opening position, dressed in a question mark, delivered in the voice of somebody making conversation.

Here is what I want to say at the start, before this gets heavy. You are not manipulative and you are not controlling. You are frightened, and frightened people ask questions that are trying to steer, and the steering is the fear moving through the only vehicle available to a mother four hundred miles away.

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it

There is a proverb that describes this exactly, and it does not soften it.

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. (Proverbs 18:13, King James Version)

Answereth before he heareth. That is a description of somebody who has arrived at a conclusion and is now conducting the conversation as a formality.

And notice that the proverb does not describe it as unkindness. It describes it as folly, which is a word about effectiveness. The person doing it is not primarily hurting somebody. They are wasting the conversation, because a conversation with a settled conclusion in it cannot produce any information at all.

You are conducting conversations that cannot bring you anything new, and a question with an answer already behind it has never once been able to tell a mother one thing she did not know. Proverbs 18:13 calls it folly rather than cruelty, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen on the Tuesday somebody heard herself.

Now the useful half, which is buried in the word before.

Before he heareth. Which means the correction is a matter of order rather than of character. Hear first, answer second. The proverb is not asking anybody to have no opinions or to stop caring what happens.

It is asking for a sequence, and a sequence is a thing a person can change in one conversation on one Tuesday.

You are able to change an order and not a personality, and a habit of answering first has never once been a fixed feature of anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a sequence changeable in an evening, and the written word puts the fault in the sequence rather than in the person.

Why she stopped

Now let me describe what happened at her end, because it is not that she has grown away from you.

A nineteen year old works out very quickly which of her mother's questions are real.

And once she has worked that out, the calculation changes. Telling you something is no longer telling you something. It is opening a file. It means a follow up, and a suggestion, and a check in about it next week, and possibly a version of the same conversation with her father.

So she stopped supplying material. Not out of resentment. Out of economy.

You are dealing with an economy and not a rejection, and a young woman who has stopped supplying information has never once stopped loving the person she is not telling. Proverbs 18:13 names the cost of answering first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who explains a silence to the person on the wrong end of it.

And I want to name what is actually behind the steering, because it is the thing that has to be treated.

The fear is that she makes a decision nobody can undo from four hundred miles away.

That fear is honest and it is not silly, and it has one intolerable feature: there is nothing to do about it. So it comes out as questions, because a question is the only lever a mother has left, and a lever gets used when a person is frightened and holding one.

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

You are holding the only lever left to you and using it too often, and a mother with no other instrument has never once been a mother who was trying to control anybody. Proverbs 18:13 puts the folly in the order of things without one word about motive, and the Spirit of God is the one who names the fear underneath the questions.

Ask one you would be happy to lose

So here is the thing to do, and the test built into it is the whole of it.

Ask her one question this week that you would be genuinely content to have answered in a way you disagree with. And then thank her for the answer.

That is the test. Before you ask it, check: is there an answer to this that would make me argue. If there is, it is not the question. Find one where any honest answer from her would be fine with you.

You are able to ask something with no preferred answer inside it, and a question you cannot lose has never once been a question worth asking. The Holy Spirit is the one in a room where somebody asks a question she has not already answered, and it is written in Proverbs 18:13 that answering before hearing is folly.

It will be harder than it sounds, and here is the practical version if the test is difficult.

Ask about her experience rather than her plans. What is the best part of a Tuesday there. Who makes her laugh. What is the food actually like. What does she do between four and six.

None of those has a right answer, which is exactly what makes them real, and they are also the questions that produce the material you actually want, because a person who is talking freely tells you far more about how they are than a person answering a direct question about how they are.

You are able to learn more by asking about a Tuesday than by asking about a heart, and an ordinary question has never once brought back less than a direct one. Proverbs 18:13 puts the hearing first and treats that order as the whole of the wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a mother back a conversation she can actually learn something in.

And then thank her. Out loud, briefly, without ceremony. Thanks for telling me that. Four words that tell a nineteen year old that supplying information was not a mistake.

You are able to make it safe to tell you something, and four words of thanks have never once been too small to start reopening a channel that closed in October. Scripture puts the hearing first and the answering second and treats that order as the whole of the wisdom, and the same Spirit who wrote it is in your kitchen when the thanks come out.