Only If Somebody Else Is Coming

The answer is never no. That is what makes this one so hard to hold.

The answer is: can Katie come. The answer is: only if Jamal is coming too. The answer is: yeah, if it is not just us.

And you say yes, every time, and you make the arrangement, and you go, and you have a perfectly nice afternoon walking about six feet behind two children who are talking to each other.

And somewhere in that six feet a sentence assembled itself, probably about two years ago, and it has been running quietly ever since.

They will do it, but not with me.

I want to get that sentence out and look at it in daylight, because I do not think it survives being looked at, and it has been costing you a great deal in the dark.

Two are better than one

There is a passage in Ecclesiastes that is usually read at weddings and is actually about something much plainer.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, King James Version)

Two are better than one.

That is not a compliment paid to friendship. It is stated as a fact about how people work, and it is stated flatly, as though it were as obvious as weather. Nobody in that passage is being told off for wanting company.

You are watching an ordinary human fact play out, and it was never a preference expressed against you. Ecclesiastes 4:9 states plainly that two do better than one without a hint of criticism for anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as a description rather than a defeat.

And notice who is warned in that passage. Not the person who wants a companion. The one who is alone when he falls. The whole weight of the text is on the difficulty of being on your own, which is precisely what your children are avoiding when they ask if Katie can come.

You have children doing exactly what the passage recommends, and it was never a judgment on the company already available to them. The written word puts the caution on aloneness and never on the wanting of a friend, and the Spirit of God is what takes a false reading off a woman walking six feet behind.

What the sentence gets wrong

So let me take that sentence apart, because it has one word doing all the damage.

They will do it, but not with me.

The word is with. And the sentence assumes that a child who brings a friend is choosing the friend instead of you, when what is actually happening is that they are choosing the friend as well as you, and the mother is the one standing there in both versions.

Check it. On these walks, who is present? Who arranged it? Who is the reason there is a walk at all? Not Katie.

Wanting company is not the same as not wanting you, and a child who brings a friend has still come out of the door.

You are not being replaced on those afternoons, and it was never a choice being made between you and anybody. Ecclesiastes 4 sets two above one and says nothing at all about who the two are, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let a mother read a friendship as a verdict.

And there is something else worth saying, and it is about age rather than affection. A twelve year old walking with a parent is doing a thing that has an audience. A twelve year old walking with a friend has a shape for the afternoon that makes sense to them. That is developmental and it is temporary and it says nothing about you at all.

Say yes and walk at the back

Here is the practical part, and it is going to sound like doing nothing.

Say yes to the friend. Every time. Without a pause, without a joke about it, without the small dry remark that gives away what it costs.

You are able to say yes cleanly, and it has never once been dishonest to leave your own disappointment out of a child's afternoon. The passage recommends the second person without any comment on the first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman answering a question in a doorway without a note in her voice.

Then go, and walk at the back, and let them have the front. Do not try to join the conversation. Do not ask questions into it. Six feet behind two children who are talking is one of the better places a parent can be, and almost nobody realizes it at the time.

And here is the part that pays. Katie goes home. And the walk back from Katie's, or the ten minutes after she leaves, is a completely different piece of ground, and quite a lot gets said in it.

You are being handed the ten minutes after, and it has never once been a lesser share of the afternoon. Ecclesiastes 4:10 puts the value on somebody being there when it matters rather than on being the one talked to, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a mother waiting for the quiet part.