He Says Yes And He Is Somewhere Else

He says yes and it is worse than a no.

That is a hard sentence and you have never said it, because it sounds thankless and because he did nothing wrong. He came. He sat down. He stayed the whole time.

And he was somewhere else for the whole of it. Present, polite, answering when spoken to, and about four inches behind his own face.

So you sit there getting what you asked for and not getting what you wanted, and there is nothing you can point at, and you cannot complain about a boy who agreed to everything.

Here is where this has been going, and it is why it is worth stopping.

You have started grading his presence. Not out loud and not deliberately, but there is a running assessment happening at that table about whether he is really here, and a person being assessed can feel it even when they are only half in the room.

I want to take that assessment out of your hands, and I want to be honest about why it is there.

It is there because you love him and you can feel the distance. That is not possessiveness. It is a father noticing something true.

But the noticing has become a measurement, and measurement is the one thing that keeps him behind his own face.

Their heart is far from me

There is a verse in Isaiah about people who are doing everything right and are not there, and it is usually quoted as an accusation. Read it as a description instead.

Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. (Isaiah 29:13, King James Version)

The situation is exactly the one at your table. Bodies present, words correct, and something not arrived.

And here is the thing worth noticing: God says this about people He continues to deal with. He names the distance and does not withdraw from it.

You are a father who was given something real, and a son who sat down has never once been a son who did not come. Isaiah 29:13 names a distance without ending the relationship it sits inside, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can put that in front of a man without any advice about how to fix his boy.

And notice what God does not do in that passage.

He does not demand more feeling. He does not ask them to try harder at being present. He describes what is true, accurately, and carries on being God to them.

You have permission to see something clearly and do nothing about it, and a distance named honestly has never once had to be solved by the one who noticed it. The Spirit of God is the one who separates seeing from fixing, and it is written in Isaiah 29 that the naming is done by God and the work that follows is His.

Which lands on your Tuesday like this: the distance is real, it is not yours to close, and it does not disqualify the evening.

You are able to have a real evening with somebody who is partly elsewhere, and twenty minutes with a boy behind his own face have never once been twenty minutes wasted. It is written that they drew near with their mouth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who works in the drawing near that did happen.

What the yes actually cost him

Now something about him, and it will change how the yes looks to you.

A fifteen or sixteen year old saying yes is spending something. It costs him time he had allocated elsewhere, and it puts him in a room with his family when there are easier rooms in the house.

He paid that. Every time. And what he had left over after paying it is not much, and that is what shows up at the table.

You are looking at what he had left rather than at what he spent, and a boy who paid to be there has never once been a boy who did not want to be. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a father the cost of something he has been reading as a cheap yes, and Isaiah 29:13 has people drawing near at real expense while something else stays back.

And the yes is not politeness, which is what you have half suspected.

A boy who did not want to be at that table would have said no. It is available, it costs nothing, and he has used it before. He said yes instead, week after week, and then sat there with less than he wished he had.

You have been given the answer you were after and have not been able to receive it, and a yes has never once needed a full heart behind it to be a yes. It is written in Isaiah 29 that the drawing near was real even when the heart was far, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man receive something incomplete without calling it nothing.

So stop grading. There is nothing to grade and the grading is the thing keeping him at four inches.

You are able to take what was offered exactly as it came, and an unassessed evening has never once been an evening a young person had to defend himself in. The Spirit of God is the one at work in a room where nobody is being measured, and Scripture names a distance without demanding it close.

Take the yes as it comes

Here is the instruction and it is entirely about you.

Take the yes exactly as it comes tonight, and ask for nothing else in the whole twenty minutes.

No follow up questions designed to draw him out. No how was your day in the voice that means something. No pause where an answer of a certain length was expected.

You are able to want nothing further from somebody who already came, and an evening with no second ask in it has never once been an evening anybody had to survive. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in a table where nothing more was wanted, and Isaiah 29:13 has God name a distance and keep the people.

And here is the specific thing to stop, because it is the one he can feel.

The check. There is a glance a father makes at a son to see whether he is really here, and it takes about half a second, and a sixteen year old registers every single one.

Every check tells him he is being read, and being read is precisely what makes a person retreat further behind their own face.

You have been measuring the thing you wanted to grow, and a boy who is not being watched has never once had a reason to stay four inches back. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a measuring instrument out of a father's hands, and it is written that the fear was taught by the precept of men rather than grown.

And be genuinely fine with what shows up. That is the whole of it.

You are able to be content with a partial thing, and a father who wanted nothing more has never once been a father who settled for less. It is written in Isaiah 29 that God stayed with people whose hearts were far, and the Spirit of God is the one who does the closing of a distance nobody was measuring.