They Talk To Everyone Except Me

You heard them from another room and they were being funny.

Properly funny, at length, with somebody else's parent, telling a story with all the timing in it and a voice you have not been given in about eight months.

And you stood in the hallway holding a plate and you did not go in.

Because if you go in it stops. Not deliberately. It just cools by about ten degrees and reroutes, and everybody carries on as if nothing has changed, and you are the only person in the building who noticed the temperature drop.

The thought that follows is the one you would not say out loud, which is that they are perfectly capable of all of it and you are the one they have decided not to do it with.

I am not going to give you a way to get that version at home. That is a technique and this is not a place that hands those out. And I am not going to explain to you why they do it, because I do not know your child and I would only be guessing at your expense.

Thou knowest my downsitting

There is a psalm that opens by describing being known so completely that there is nowhere left to be a stranger, and one line in it does the work here.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. (Psalm 139:2, King James Version)

Afar off. That is the phrase.

The knowing in that verse does not depend on proximity. It is not built out of access or conversation or being let in. It works at a distance, on somebody who is not currently offering anything.

You have a God who knows that child from afar off, and none of it has ever depended on being handed the good version. Psalm 139:2 says thou understandest my thought afar off, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a hallway where somebody is standing holding a plate.

And there is a small comfort hidden in the mechanics of it, because that verse means the version of your child you overheard is not a version God had to be introduced to.

The warmth is not new information to Him. It has been known the whole time, and known from the same distance you are currently standing at.

You are looking at somebody who is already fully known, and none of what you are not being shown is missing anywhere. It is written in Psalm 139:2 that the understanding reaches afar off, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds the whole of a person nobody currently has access to.

What the rerouting actually is

Now let me say something about the ten degrees, because the conclusion sitting on it is not the accurate one.

The conclusion is: they save the good version for other people. And what is actually happening is closer to the opposite, and it is not flattering, and it is true.

Other people get a performance. It is a good one, it is warm, it is genuinely them, and it is also being produced for an audience who has to be won.

Nobody has to be won at your table. That is the room the performance is not for, and one word answers are what a person hands to the place where nothing has to be maintained.

That is not a compensation prize and I am not offering it as a comfort. It is just the mechanism, and it is worth knowing, because you have been reading the flatness as a verdict when it is closer to a resting state.

You are the place where nothing has to be kept up, and the flatness of it has never once been the withdrawal you have been reading. Psalm 139:2 knows the downsitting as well as the uprising, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference between a person resting and a person leaving.

And here is the plain thing, because eight months of 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 anybody being quietly written off in their own house.

It is a fourteen year old who does not have to be charming at home, which is a strange sort of compliment nobody ever wants to receive.

You have not been written off, and one word at your table has never once been a report on the parent sitting across it. The written word knows the sitting down as well as the standing up in Psalm 139:2, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to grade a household on its warmest available minute.

If the worry is bigger than this

One straight sentence, because this article is about an ache and not about an alarm.

If the feeling here is real worry rather than sadness about a quiet season, then speak to somebody qualified. A doctor, the school, a counselor. Describe plainly what has been noticed and let a trained person tell you what it is.

That is not disloyalty and it is not making a fuss. It is what a person does when the thing in front of them is bigger than a quiet season, and it is not something to weigh up alone for another six months.

Psalm 139:2 holds the whole of a person including what nobody in the house can see, and the Holy Spirit is the one who goes with a parent into that phone call.

You are able to go and ask somebody, and there has never been a version of this where carrying the worry silently was the better parenting. Psalm 139:2 has God understanding afar off, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a conversation a person has been putting off since spring.