He is upstairs. He has been upstairs most of the day, and you have been downstairs, and neither of you is doing anything.
Monday, half past nine, and he goes in himself, which the solicitor said is better and which you understand and which does not make Sunday night any different.
The bag is by the door already. It has almost nothing in it, because there is a list of what he can take and it is short, and packing it took eleven minutes on Wednesday and both of you were completely calm about it and neither of you has mentioned it since.
You have two days.
And you cannot think of one single thing to say to him.
Everything that comes into your head is one of two things. It is a lecture, which is dressed up as advice about how to be inside and which he does not need from you and would receive as exactly what it is. Or it is a collapse, which is a mother crying in a kitchen and needing her son to manage her on the last weekend he has.
He is twenty-three. He did the thing. Nobody in this house is pretending otherwise and he has never once asked you to.
And on Monday morning at half past nine he is going to pick that bag up, and the last thing he hears from you is going to be whatever you happen to say, and you have two days to find something that is neither a speech nor a breakdown.
David put the worst address he could think of in the sentence
Sit down on those stairs a minute. I am not going to give you advice for him and I am not going to ask what he did.
Let me put a true thing down first, and Scripture holds me to it and the Spirit will not have me managing a woman on a Saturday like this one: your instincts about both options are right. The lecture would land as a lecture. The collapse would put him to work. You are not being cold by declining both; you are reading the room accurately, which is what mothers do at their best, and you are doing it under a weight most people never carry.
And nobody in this house is on trial in this article. Not him. He knows exactly what he did and this is not the place where that gets discussed. And not you.
Now come and look at a psalm where a man goes looking for somewhere God is not, and does it deliberately.
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.Psalm 139:8-10
David is not being poetic for the sake of it. He is running an experiment. He goes through the list: the highest place, the lowest place, the furthest place, and he tests each one to see whether God is in it.
And he puts hell in the list. He deliberately picks the worst address available to his imagination and puts it in the middle of the sentence, and then says behold, thou art there.
That word behold is doing something. It is the word you use when you have found something surprising. He looked in the worst place he could name, expecting a gap, and there was no gap.
There is no address on Monday, or after Monday, where God has to be sent for, and David checked the extremes on purpose so that nobody would have to wonder. That is not me comforting a mother on a Saturday. That is what is written and what the psalm is doing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes something that old and lays it in a hallway with a packed bag in it.
Here is what nobody explains at a door like Monday's. When you speak a blessing over your son, you are not sending anything with him and you are not securing anything about where he is going. You are agreeing out loud with what God has already said about a man He made. Your mouth is a door. God is the one coming through it, and He is already at the other address, and He does not require anybody's permission to be there.
A blessing said at that door on Monday morning is with him at four o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, and none of its weight is in your ability to visit. Scripture says God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), settled, past tense, and the Spirit is the one who carries a word from heaven into any building on earth without applying for anything.
Why both options were wrong
Now let me name the mechanism, because you have felt it and not had words for it and I want you to have them by Monday. What is written has a third kind of speech in it, and the Spirit has been carrying that kind for thousands of years.
A lecture requires him to receive instruction, at the exact moment when he has the least capacity for it and the most reason to resent it.
A collapse requires him to be strong for you, which means the last thing he does in this house is work.
Both of them are speech aimed at him, and both of them ask something of him, and that is the flaw they share.
A blessing is not aimed at him and does not ask anything of him. It goes over the top of a person. He does not have to receive it, understand it, agree with it, or do anything with his face while it happens. It is the only kind of speech in the world that can be handed to a person who has nothing left to give.
That is not a technique and I will not sell it as one. It is a form of words designed for exactly this, thousands of years before Monday.
God has not asked you to prepare your son for what is coming, and He has never once made a mother's last sentence the thing a young man's next two years rest on. It is written that the eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27), and underneath is a place no visiting order is required for, and the same Spirit who breathed that is in this hallway with you.
Hear what I am not doing. I am not telling you he is safe, and I am not telling you it goes well, and I have no authority to promise you an outcome for Monday or for any day after it. What God does in that place is His, entirely, and anybody who trades you a promise about your son for a good goodbye is taking something from you at the worst moment of your life.
What I can put in your hands is this: something can be said over him at that door that goes where you cannot and does not depend on either of you being able to bear Monday well. God's word does not come back to Him empty (Isaiah 55:11), and the Spirit is the one carrying it, and twenty words at half past nine on a Monday morning is not a small thing to hand a young man.
So here is what is true on those stairs, with two days left.
The blessing exists. God settled it in Christ before that boy was born, it is written down where anybody can go and read it, and the Holy Spirit is here in this hallway and He will be in that building on Monday afternoon. What is missing is not the words, and it is certainly not your love for that young man. What is missing is twenty words at a door.
You are the one God appointed to speak over your son, and there is no version of Monday in which you have failed him by being unable to make a speech. Nobody has ever had to hold themselves together to be used for this. Faith is an open hand and not a performance, God is the one who fills the hand, and the Spirit does the carrying; what He carries is what is written.
I am not going to tell you what Monday holds, or the two years after it, or what comes home at the end of them. That belongs to God, and I will not stand in your hallway and guess at your son. What I can tell you is what is already settled, because it is written and I am only reading it out where you can hear it: a man went looking for the one place God would not be, put the worst address he could think of in the sentence, and found no gap anywhere.
You have two days. You do not need a speech. You need twenty words, they are already written, and His Spirit will carry them.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing in that hallway, out loud, on Sunday night, before Monday comes, because a blessing is spoken and not thought. You have the standing to say them, and not because you have found a way to be strong enough. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak God's word over your own son is His authority, handed to you and carried by His Spirit. Scripture says whoever speaks to the mountain and does not doubt shall have what he says. Says. Out loud. So say it here, to two days of looking for something that is neither a lecture nor a collapse. What God does in that place is His to decide, and none of it is yours to produce.
- Monday morning at that door, you are coming and you are not the end of what is over him. Scripture says if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there, and David put the worst address he could think of into the sentence on purpose.
- Two bad options that both ask something of a boy with nothing left to give, get out of this hallway in the name of Jesus. It is written that the eternal God is my refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms, and underneath does not require a visiting order.
- Lord, You are already in that building and You do not have to be sent for. I thank You, because Your face is shining on my son and Your Spirit is the one carrying it, and on Monday my hand is going on his head while he can still hear me.
Psalm 139:8
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