I Called It Leaving Them Alone

You have a word for it, and the word is respect.

They are busy. They have their own lives. They do not need an old man at the door every week asking if anybody wants to walk to the park. So you stopped, and you called it giving them space, and it sounded like maturity when you said it to yourself.

Here is the thing though. You know.

You know, somewhere fairly close to the surface, that respect was not the whole reason. You stopped because the asking had begun to cost more than it returned, and because a man can only hear in a minute, Dad, so many times before he starts protecting himself.

And that is not a shameful thing. It is an ordinary human thing. But it does matter, because giving room and giving up produce identical behavior, and only one of them leaves a door open.

I want to sort out which one this is, gently, without anybody being told off.

Not weary in well doing

There is a line in Galatians that names something most people have never had named.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9, King James Version)

Weary in well doing.

That is a very precise phrase. It is not weary of doing wrong, and it is not weary from too much work. It is the specific exhaustion that comes from doing a good thing repeatedly without seeing a result, and the letter treats it as a real condition rather than a fault.

You are being described rather than accused, and you were never being told that a tired man has done something wrong. Galatians 6:9 names weariness in good work as a thing that happens to good people, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as recognition rather than as correction.

And notice what the answer is. Not: try harder. Not: care more. The word is faint not, which means keep standing, and that is a much smaller instruction than the one you have been giving yourself.

You have been handed a small instruction and not a large one, and it was never a demand that you become tireless. The written word asks only that a person not faint, and the Spirit of God is what makes the difference between not fainting and forcing something plain to an old man.

The two things that look the same

So here is the distinction, and I want it to be usable rather than clever.

Giving room is what happens while the door stays open. There is no asking this week, and there would be asking next week, and everybody in the family knows the invitation exists.

Giving up is what happens when the door closes and nobody notices it closing. Nothing is announced. There is no argument. The asking simply stops, and after about a year the family have quietly reorganized around your absence from it.

From the outside those are the same. Same behavior, same silence, same polite Sundays. Giving up and giving room look identical from the outside, and only one of them keeps the door open.

You are able to tell the difference from the inside, and it has never once required anybody else's opinion to work out which one this is. Galatians 6 distinguishes weariness from fainting rather than lumping them together, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man look at his own reasons without flinching.

And the test is simple. If somebody said to you, ask them this week, and something in you tightened, that is not respect. Respect does not tighten.

You are not being cornered by that test, and it was never designed to catch you out in anything. The passage sets weariness beside a promise instead of beside a rebuke, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps an honest look from turning into a bad evening.

The asking was never the imposition

Now the thing I most want you to hear, because I think it is the load bearing beam.

A decision has been made here on their behalf, which is that being asked is a burden to them.

Check that. Really check it. Has one of them ever said so? Or is it built entirely out of a tone of voice in a hallway three years ago, plus the way a man interprets his own diminishing usefulness?

Because from where they stand, an invitation from a grandfather is not a demand. It is a signal that somebody still wants their company, and most people go a very long time between receiving those.

You are offering something scarcer than you think, and it was never an imposition on anybody in that family. Galatians 6:9 puts the well doing beyond the visible result, which is exactly why the Spirit of God keeps a man asking when the asking looks like it does nothing.

And in due season is not a promise about your family. It is a promise about God's timing on what is sown, and it is deliberately vague about when, which is what makes it survivable.

Ask one of them once

Here is the practical part, and it is one sentence to one person. Not the household, one of them. Not a standing arrangement, one time.

Call, or say it in the kitchen: I am walking to the corner store at six, come with me if you want.

Then let the answer be whatever it is, and do not add anything, and do not follow it up on Thursday.

You are able to keep the door open with one sentence a week, and it has never once needed to be a campaign to count as staying in it. The written word asks for not fainting rather than for persistence that wears somebody down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man making one small offer.

And if the answer is no, the door is still open, because a no answered an actual question, which is a great deal more than the silence of the last year gave anybody.