There is something going on with your daughter and you do not know what it is.
That is a hard place to be as a father and I am not going to be brisk about it. Something changed about four months ago, and she is fine, and she is also not telling you anything, and you have been living with the gap ever since.
And so the walks began.
And they are good walks and you enjoy them and there is nothing wrong with any of them, except that you know exactly what you are doing out there, and so does she.
Because a person can feel the difference between being with somebody and being asked. Not from the questions. From underneath them. And a seventeen year old who can feel an interview will produce interview answers, which are accurate, brief, and contain nothing.
Seeketh not her own
There is a line in Corinthians in the middle of the famous passage that is easy to read past.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. (1 Corinthians 13:4-5, King James Version)
Seeketh not her own.
Most of that list is about what love does not do to other people. This one is different. It is about what love is not trying to get.
And that is a strange thing to say about love, because love wants things. It wants the person to be well, it wants to know them, it wants them close. The verse is not denying any of that. It is saying that the wanting does not become a seeking, and that there is a difference.
You are being shown a love that is not out to obtain anything, and it was never a description of somebody who has stopped caring. 1 Corinthians 13:5 puts the seeking outside of love without touching the wanting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as freedom rather than as detachment.
And notice where it sits in that list. Between not behaving unseemly and not being easily provoked. It is placed among ordinary conduct rather than among lofty things, which suggests it is meant to describe how a person actually moves through a Tuesday.
You have been given something that applies to an ordinary evening, and it was never a high idea about love in general. The written word puts the not seeking among plain behaviors, and the Spirit of God is what makes it a thing a man can do on a sidewalk.
What she can feel
Now let me be specific about what is arriving, because it is not the questions.
It is the attention.
There is a particular quality to being attended to by somebody who is looking for something. It is not unpleasant. It is not hostile. It is just noticeably different from being with somebody who is not looking for anything, and everybody can feel it, and nobody can quite say what it is.
And your daughter is seventeen, which is about the age at which a person becomes extremely good at detecting it, because at seventeen everybody is looking for something.
A walk that is looking for something is an interview with scenery, and love that seeks nothing of its own has nothing to find out.
You are not being shut out, and it was never her unwillingness that produced four word answers on those roads. 1 Corinthians 13 puts the seeking outside of love entirely, which is exactly why the Spirit of God works on what a father is doing rather than on what a daughter is withholding.
And here is the difficult part, which I will say once. You may not find out. This article does not contain a better method for finding out, because there is not one, and the thing you actually want is for her to tell you, and that only happens in a place where nothing is being sought.
Go with nothing to find out
So the practical part, and it is a decision made before you leave.
Walk twenty minutes with one of them and do not try to find out one single thing.
You are able to go out with nothing to obtain, and it has never once been indifference to stop looking. The passage puts the not seeking among ordinary conduct rather than among heights, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man who left the question at home.
That means no leading. No mentioning the friend she has stopped mentioning. No general question that is actually a specific question with a coat on.
Talk about your own week. Say something about work. Point at things. Be a person who is walking rather than a person who is available to be told something, because available is its own kind of pressure and she can feel it at forty paces.
And decide this before you leave, because if it is decided out there it will be decided at about minute eleven when nothing has happened, and by then you will already have leaned.
You are able to settle it in advance, and it has never once been possible to stop looking halfway through a walk. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says love seeketh not her own without withdrawing one bit of the wanting, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on a road with a father who is not going to find out anything tonight.
So here is what I believe is going out over a father walking beside a daughter he cannot read.
You are not being shut out of your own child's life, and you were never doing anything except loving somebody enough to go looking. I am not promising you that she tells you. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says charity seeketh not her own and places that among ordinary conduct, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who separates a father's wanting from a father's seeking.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have twenty minutes available with nothing to obtain in them, and going out empty handed has never once been the same as going out indifferent. The written word takes the seeking out of love and leaves everything else standing, and the Spirit of God is the one who is beside a man talking about his own week for the first time.
Decide in the kitchen. Then walk.
Declare this over yourself
- Interview I have been running under twenty minutes of walking, you are not love and my daughter identified you weeks ago. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says charity seeketh not her own, so by the Holy Spirit I walk tonight with nothing to find out in the name of Jesus.
- Four months of not knowing what changed, you were never a thing a better question on a sidewalk could solve. The written word takes the seeking out of love and leaves every bit of the wanting standing, and by the Holy Spirit I am done being available at her in a way she can feel.
- Father, You put seeketh not her own among the ordinary things and not among the heights. Your word in 1 Corinthians 13 removes the obtaining without removing one part of the love, so by Your Spirit I decide it in the kitchen tonight and I walk out empty handed.
1 Corinthians 13:5
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