Nobody In Our Family Has Done This

There is no document, and the searching has already happened.

Several times. Usually late, usually after everybody else has gone up, and the search terms have got more specific each time and the results have got less useful.

What is being looked for is a plain explanation of how all of this works. Not the official version, which exists and is written for people who already know. The other one. The one that assumes nothing, that says what actually happens and in what order and what a family is supposed to do at each point.

It does not exist. It has never existed.

And the reason it has never existed is not that somebody forgot to write it. It is that the information is not held in documents at all. It is held in people, and it moves between them in kitchens and cars and at the end of conversations about something else, and every family that has done this before has that transfer running in the background of ordinary life.

Yours does not, and that is the whole of the difficulty, and it is not a shortage of anything in your household.

Ye have not passed this way heretofore

There is a sentence in Joshua that gets said to an entire nation at the edge of something none of them had done.

Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore. (Joshua 3:4, King James Version)

For ye have not passed this way heretofore.

That sentence is not a rebuke. It is stated as the reason for an instruction, plainly, as a fact about the situation rather than as a fault in the people standing there.

And look at what God does about it. He does not hand them a document. He puts something visible out in front of them, at a distance where everybody can see it, and He says: keep a space so that ye may know the way.

You are standing where a whole nation once stood, and never having done a thing before has never once been a fault in the family standing at the edge of it. Joshua 3:4 names the inexperience as a plain fact and builds an instruction on top of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one at a kitchen table at midnight.

Now the space, because the space is the practical part.

Two thousand cubits. That is a long way, and the reason given for it is visibility: at that distance, everybody in the whole company can see the thing that is leading, including the people at the very back who cannot see anything else.

The instruction is not: get closer. The instruction is: stay far enough back to be able to see.

You are able to be at the back of a crowd and still see the way, and being behind people who have done this before has never once meant not being able to see. The Spirit of God is the one who arranges a thing so that everybody in the company can follow it, and the written word builds the space in for the ones who can see nothing else.

The information lives in people

Now the practical half, and it is the thing that will change the next six months.

Stop searching and start asking.

Not because searching is lazy. Because the thing being searched for is not written anywhere, and every hour spent looking for it confirms a false idea, which is that there is a document somewhere that other families have and yours does not.

There is no document. Other families have people.

You are able to go and stand where the transfer happens, and a family without that running in the background has never once been a family that could not join it. Joshua 3:4 puts a visible thing out in front of a whole company rather than a page in anybody's hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a household from a screen to a kitchen.

You are able to go where the information actually lives, and a night spent searching has never once been able to reach a thing that was only ever held in somebody's head. Joshua 3:4 puts a visible thing in front of a whole company rather than a written one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who redirects a family from a screen to a person.

And here is the part that has been stopping this, and I want to say it as plainly as I can, because it is the real obstacle and it is not practical.

Asking marks you.

That is the fear. That a question identifies a family as one that does not know, and that the person being asked will adjust something behind their face, and that a household will be filed somewhere as being out of its depth.

I am not going to tell you that nobody ever does that, because occasionally somebody does. What I will tell you is that it is rarer than the fear, that most people are pleased to be asked, and that the ones who are not have told you something useful about themselves in about four seconds.

Not knowing something is not a verdict on a family.

You are able to ask and find out something about the person answering, and one question has never once been able to file a household anywhere. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a question askable, and Joshua 3:4 names the inexperience out loud in front of everybody and attaches no shame to it.

Write it down, then ask a person

So here is the thing to do, and it is two halves and the first one makes the second possible.

Write down the one question that embarrasses you most. And ask a real person that exact question this week.

Write it first, on paper, in the actual words. Because a question that stays in the head stays vague, and a vague question cannot be asked, and the vagueness is doing a great deal of the work of keeping it unasked.

You are able to put an embarrassing question into words, and a thing written down in your own hand has never once been as large as the same thing kept in the head. It is written in Joshua 3:4 that they had not passed that way before, said out loud in front of the whole company, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen with somebody writing a sentence on paper.

Then ask it, in those words, to a person. Not a search box.

Anybody who has been through it. A colleague, somebody at church, a friend of a friend, the parent of somebody older. It does not have to be somebody you know well. It arguably works better if it is not.

And ask the whole question, including the part that makes it embarrassing. I do not know how this works and nobody in our family has done it. Those two clauses at the front change everything that comes after them, because they tell the other person exactly what kind of answer is needed, and most people will then give you a much better answer than the one you asked for.

You are able to say the embarrassing half out loud, and the two clauses in front of a question have never once made anybody think less of the person asking it. Scripture states the inexperience as the reason for the instruction rather than as an embarrassment, and the same Spirit who kept it in that order is with you when you ask.