We Have Already Paid For The Year

It comes up in the second minute every time.

He says something about how it is going. One of you says something back. And then, somewhere around the second minute, the figure appears in the conversation, and it does not appear as an accusation and it is not said unkindly, but it appears.

We paid for the year.

And after that sentence, the conversation is not about your son anymore. It is about a payment, and everybody in the room can feel the change, and your son goes quiet in the specific way a nineteen year old goes quiet when he understands that he has become expensive.

Here is what I want to name at the start, and I want it said plainly because it will make the rest of this easier to read: neither of you is being mercenary. This is not a house where money matters more than a child.

What is actually happening is that a large payment made in June has become the loudest object in the room, and it is doing something that money does when it is large enough: it has started acting like a fact that has to be respected, rather than like a thing that already happened and is over.

A just man falleth seven times

There is a proverb about falling that gets used to encourage people, and the arithmetic inside it is the interesting part.

For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. (Proverbs 24:16, King James Version)

Seven times. Not once, forgivably. Seven.

And the man in that sentence is described as just, which is not a description of somebody who has been given an allowance for failure. It is a description of what a just man's life actually contains: repeated falls, and repeated risings, and the proverb treats the pattern as normal rather than as a decline.

You are looking at one fall in a life built to contain several, and a single change of course has never once been a reason to expect a pattern. The Holy Spirit is the one in a kitchen where a figure keeps arriving in the second minute, and Proverbs 24:16 puts seven falls inside a just man's ordinary biography.

Now the part that matters for a family holding an invoice.

Nothing in that proverb costs the man anything at the sixth fall that it did not cost him at the first. There is no ledger in it. There is no accumulating debt where a man who has fallen five times has less standing to rise the sixth. Each fall is followed by a rising and the arithmetic never enters into it.

You have a son who is not in arrears with anybody, and a decision that cost money has never once put a young man on a shorter leash. The written word counts the falls and never once counts a cost, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a ledger out of a household.

The money is already gone

Now the practical part, and this is the sentence that changes the room.

The money is gone either way.

Say that to yourselves slowly, because it is simply true. If he stays, the money is gone. If he leaves, the money is gone. There is no version of the next six months in which any of that payment comes back, and there is no decision he can make that recovers a penny of it.

Which means it is not a factor. It cannot be. A thing that is identical under both options has no place in a comparison between them.

You are able to take out of the room the one thing that does not change either way, and a payment that is identical under both outcomes has never once been able to inform a decision. Proverbs 24:16 counts risings rather than costs, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes an object from a table where it has been sitting since June.

And I want to say what the money has actually been doing in that room, because it is not what it looks like.

It has been standing in for a fear. It is much easier to say we paid for the year than to say I am frightened that my son is giving up on something and that this is the start of a pattern. The first sentence is concrete and defensible. The second one is the real one.

So the figure keeps arriving in the second minute because it is a safe way to raise an unsafe subject.

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

You are able to name the fear instead of naming the figure, and a number said out loud in a kitchen has never once been the thing that was actually meant. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a parent say the frightening sentence instead of the affordable one, and Proverbs 24:16 names the fall and the rising and refuses to convert either into an account.

Say it to each other first

So here is the thing to do, and it happens between the two of you before it happens anywhere near your son.

Say out loud to each other, once, that the money is gone either way. And then have the conversation about him without it in the room.

To each other first. That is deliberate. If the sentence is said for the first time in front of him, it becomes a concession, and a nineteen year old will hear it as his parents deciding to be generous about something he has cost them.

Said between the two of you, on a Tuesday, in an empty kitchen, it is not a concession. It is two people agreeing on a fact, and once you both hold the same fact, the conversation with him changes shape before it starts.

You are able to settle something between the two of you before he ever hears it, and one sentence said in an empty kitchen has never once been a small preparation for a hard conversation. It is written in Proverbs 24:16 that a just man falls and rises with no account kept between the two, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a room where two parents agree about a fact.

And then have the actual conversation. About him. About what he is finding hard, about what he thinks, about the thing he has been trying to say since the second minute of every phone call for a month.

You will find that without the figure in the room, he talks. He has not been withholding out of stubbornness. He has been withholding because it is very difficult to think out loud about your own life in front of people who have paid for it.

You are able to give him a room where nothing he says costs anybody anything, and a young man who has gone quiet has never once been a young man with nothing to say. Scripture keeps the falls and the risings in a plain sequence with no cost attached anywhere, and the same Spirit who kept it that clean is at the table when your son starts talking.