He Is Forty And He Still Says No

This is not the article you were looking for.

The ones about a teenager who will not come out are everywhere, and every one of them has a hopeful shape to it, because a teenager is fifteen and there is time.

Your son is forty. You are seventy three. And the arithmetic of that is a thing you do quietly, at about four in the morning, and there is no article anywhere that admits it exists.

So let me say it plainly, because saying it is most of what I can do. There is a number of years left, it is smaller than it was, and the thing you want is not something you can make happen in any of them.

And what is left is a question about how to spend them. Not how to win. How to spend them.

God heard the voice of the lad

There is a scene in Genesis with a parent who has moved a distance away from her own child because she cannot bear to watch.

And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bowshot: for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And she sat over against him, and lift up her voice, and wept. And God heard the voice of the lad where he is. (Genesis 21:16-17, King James Version)

She sat down over against him, a good way off.

Notice what she does. She does not leave. She goes a bowshot away, which is a distance you can see across, and she sits down facing him, and she stays there.

That is not abandonment and it is not intervention. It is a parent at the only distance she can survive, still in sight of her own child.

You are permitted a distance you can survive, and it was never all or nothing that anybody was offered. Genesis 21:16 has a mother move off and sit facing him rather than leave, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as permission rather than as a description of failure.

And then the line that undoes people. God heard the voice of the lad where he is. Not where she is. Not because of what she did. The boy is heard where he is, on his own account, and the mother's distance changes nothing about it.

You have a son who is heard where he is, and it was never your presence that carried him. The written word puts the hearing at the child's own location and outside the parent's reach entirely, and the Spirit of God is what lifts the weight of a grown man off a father's shoulders.

Campaigning and staying near

Now the distinction that this article exists for, because at seventy three you should not have to work it out yourself.

There is campaigning, and there is staying near, and they can look almost the same from outside.

Campaigning has an objective. It is asking in order to get a yes, and it keeps score, and every no is a setback in a project. It exhausts the one doing it and it makes the other person into a position to be taken.

Staying near has no objective. It is asking because that is what somebody who wants your company does, and a no is not a setback, because there was nothing being advanced. A grown child's no is his to make, and staying near without campaigning is not the same as having stopped.

You are not required to run a campaign, and it was never a project that a father was supposed to be executing. Genesis 21 has a parent sit down within sight and go no further, which is exactly why the Spirit of God is content with a man who asks and then simply stays.

And here is the thing about the years, which nobody says. Campaigning wastes them. It fills the time you have with a contest, and if the contest is lost, and it may be, you will have spent the remainder fighting rather than being nearby.

Ask once, then walk

So the practical part, and it is deliberately small because small is what a man of seventy three can sustain for years.

Ask him once, plainly, without a case attached: I am walking to the end of the road at six, come if you want.

You are able to ask without mounting anything, and it has never once required a case to have been a real invitation. The passage has a parent stay in sight without advancing on anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man saying one sentence to his own grown son.

And then let the no stand. Entirely. Do not ring on Thursday. Do not mention it at Christmas. Do not make a remark that puts a small weight on it.

Then go out for twenty minutes yourself, today, and keep going out on the same day every week, and let it be a thing that happens rather than a thing he is being got into.

Because a father who walks every week is a standing invitation that costs nobody anything, and a father who campaigns is a thing to be managed.

You are able to be a standing invitation, and that has never once required anybody to accept it to be true. Genesis 21:17 has God hear the boy where he is, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on a road with a man who has asked once and gone.