I Watched Them Fail And Said Nothing

You could have stopped it with four words.

You knew about ninety seconds before it happened. You saw the shape of it, and you could have said one short sentence, and none of the rest of it would have occurred.

And you said nothing. Deliberately, after a small internal argument that took about two seconds, and then it happened exactly the way you knew it would.

And they were not devastated. That is worth being honest about. It was not a catastrophe and they handled it better than you did.

But you have been carrying it since, and it is not guilt exactly, and you have not been able to name it in three days of trying.

I am not going to tell you whether you did the right thing. I have not met your child and I do not know what the thing was, and this site does not issue those verdicts about houses it has not stood in.

And I am not going to say anything about learning from mistakes. That whole idea has been used to justify a great deal of unnecessary standing back, and it is not what this is about.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down

There is a line in Psalm 37 that has a fall in it, and the fall is not prevented.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand. (Psalm 37:24, King James Version)

Though he fall. The falling is granted. It is right there in the verse, and nothing in the sentence is arranged to stop it.

That matters, because most of the comfort available in the world assumes that the good outcome is the one where nothing goes wrong, and this verse simply does not.

You are looking at a fall that Scripture itself does not prevent, and no verse anywhere has ever once promised that nothing would go wrong. Psalm 37:24 says though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into an afternoon three days after something happened.

And then the word utterly, which is the whole of it.

Not cast down at all would be a different promise. Utterly is a limit word. Something happened, there was a fall, and there is a floor under it that was not put there by anybody in the story.

You have a floor under that child that nobody in your house installed, and it has never once been the same thing as no fall happening. It is written in Psalm 37:24 that he shall not be utterly cast down, and the Spirit of God is the one who sets a limit rather than preventing an event.

The hand in that verse is not yours

Now let me name the thing that has gone unnamed for three days.

It is not guilt. If it were guilt an apology would have happened by now, and none has, because there is nothing to apologize for.

What it is, I think, is the strangeness of having watched something happen that you had the power to stop, and discovering that the world did not end, and not knowing what to do with a power you chose not to use.

That is a specific and disorienting feeling and almost nobody talks about it.

You are feeling something real that has no name in ordinary speech, and it has never once been the same thing as guilt. It is written in Psalm 37:24 that the LORD upholdeth him with his hand, and the Spirit of God is the one who names what a person has been carrying for three days without words.

Psalm 37:24 names a different hand doing the upholding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who was in the part of that afternoon a parent had stepped out of.

You were not the only hand in that afternoon, and the upholding has never once been assigned to the person watching. Psalm 37:24 says the LORD upholdeth him with his hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who was holding while somebody else was deliberately not.

And here is the plain thing, because three days of this has become something.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about whether you protect your children.

It is a person who did something difficult and has not been told whether it was right, which is most of parenting and is not a comfortable position.

You have not abandoned anybody, and standing back once has never once been the same as not being there. The written word puts the upholding in God's hand in Psalm 37:24, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to grade an afternoon nobody can score.

Nothing here is a case for standing back

One straight thing, because a page like this could easily become a philosophy and it must not.

Nothing in this is an argument for letting things happen. There is no principle here about the value of failure, and no suggestion that you should have done this sooner or should do it again next week.

Some things must be stopped and everybody knows which ones. This is about one afternoon where something small was allowed to happen, and about the three days after it, and about nothing else at all.

Psalm 37:24 comforts a person after a fall rather than recommending one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody afterwards without ever having advised it.

You are being met after something rather than advised about anything, and no verse in this has ever once recommended a fall. Psalm 37:24 speaks about a person who has already fallen, and the Holy Spirit is the one who comes afterwards rather than issuing a policy beforehand.