I Get Nothing When I Ask About The Day

How was your day.

Fine. Or good. Or nothing much. Or the sound, which is not a word and which you have learned to accept as an answer.

You have asked it about two thousand times. You know before you say it what is coming back, and you say it anyway, because the alternative is saying nothing, and saying nothing feels like giving up.

And then, somewhere in the last few months, a new thing arrived. You started to dread asking.

Not because of the answer. Because of the four seconds after it, where the question sits there having been answered in one word, and everybody in the kitchen knows it went nowhere, and you have to decide whether to try again or start putting things in the dishwasher.

I am not going to give you a better opening question. That is a technique and this is not a place that hands those out. And I am not going to tell you they are secretly enjoying it, because you are standing in that kitchen and I am not.

Truly my soul waiteth

There is a line at the top of Psalm 62 that gets read as a peaceful sentence and is nothing of the kind.

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation. (Psalm 62:1, King James Version)

Truly. That word is doing something. Nobody says truly about a thing that is easy.

David starts that psalm insisting, which means the waiting was not comfortable and he was not sure he was doing it well, and the whole line is a person making a declaration about a posture rather than describing a feeling.

You are holding a posture rather than failing at a conversation, and the waiting has never once meant nothing is happening. Psalm 62:1 says truly my soul waiteth upon God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen at four in the afternoon.

And look at what waiting is in that verse. It is not passive and it is not resignation. It is attached to an expectation: from him cometh my salvation.

The waiting has a direction in it. It is a person facing the place the answer will come from and staying there, whether or not anything is currently arriving.

You are facing the right direction and staying there, and the emptiness of the last four seconds has never once meant you were wrong to ask. It is written in Psalm 62:1 that the waiting looks toward where the salvation comes from, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives a direction to a person who felt like they were just standing there.

Why the question does nothing

Now the mechanics, because the question is not failing for the reason you think.

How was your day asks a person to summarize seven hours. That is a genuinely hard task, and it is hard for adults too, and most adults answer it with fine as well.

There is nothing wrong with your question. It is a question that has one usable answer and everybody uses it.

You are asking a fair question and getting the ordinary reply, and neither of those has ever been a fault in anybody. It is written in Psalm 62:1 that the waiting rests on God rather than on the answer, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the marking away from a kitchen exchange.

But repetition adds something. Two thousand askings turn a question into a ritual, and a ritual gets a ritual response, and after a while neither person is really doing anything except performing the exchange.

That is not a failure of relationship. It is what happens to any sentence said two thousand times, and it happens to good morning and how are you all over the world every day.

You are not being refused, and a worn ritual has never once been the same as a closed person. Psalm 62:1 has a man insisting on his own waiting rather than reading the silence as an answer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference between empty and absent.

And here is the plain thing, because this has become something about you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about the parent standing at that counter.

It is a worn question and a tired teenager at four in the afternoon, which is a description of most kitchens in the country.

You have not been shut out of your own child's life, and one word answers have never once been a report on the person asking. The written word has a man declaring his own posture in Psalm 62:1 rather than reading the room, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to grade a household on four seconds in a kitchen.

The dread is worth taking seriously

One more thing, because the dread is the real news in all this and it deserves attention.

The dread means the asking has started to cost you something. And a thing that costs gets rationed, and a rationed question gets asked with a slightly braced face, and a braced face is read instantly by a person who is fifteen.

That is a loop. And the way out of a loop is never to try harder inside it.

Psalm 62:1 puts the weight on God rather than on the outcome of any particular exchange, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the cost out of a question so it can be asked lightly or not at all.

You are able to stop paying for that question, and none of it has ever required a better answer to make the asking safe. Psalm 62:1 makes the waiting a settled posture, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the brace out of a person's face at four in the afternoon.