Those Two Cannot Be At One Table

There is a seating problem in your house and everybody knows about it and nobody has ever said it out loud.

Those two cannot be at one table for twenty minutes. Something goes off. It has been going off for about two years and neither of them can tell you why.

So you have adapted, the way households do, without a meeting. Things happen when one of them is out. Things happen in shifts. Things quietly do not happen at all.

And the thing you have lost in the adaptation is not the relationship between those two, which is somebody else's work and is not going to be repaired at a table.

What you lost is everything else. All the evenings that had nothing to do with those two, that you stopped attempting because a full table felt like the only real version.

I want to be plain about what this article is not. It is not a method for getting your oldest and your youngest to get along.

I do not have one, nobody who has met them has one, and any site that offers you one is selling something. That is between two people and it will take the time it takes.

What I have is the observation that you have been treating one problem as though it were the whole household.

Let there be no strife, for we be brethren

There is a scene in Genesis where two men who love each other look at a problem and do something that sounds like defeat and is not.

And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. (Genesis 13:8-9, King James Version)

Read what Abram does not do first, because it is remarkable.

He does not solve it. He does not call a meeting of the herdmen. He does not identify who is at fault, and there certainly was a fault somewhere, and he never once goes looking for it.

He looks at a piece of ground that cannot hold both households at once and he makes the ground bigger by using less of it.

You are a mother with more than one table available, and two people who clash have never once made a household one that cannot sit down. Genesis 13:8 has a man solving a strife problem with geography rather than with a conversation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman see a whole other option in her own kitchen.

And notice the reason he gives, because it is the opposite of the reason anybody expects.

For we be brethren. He separates them because of the relationship, not in spite of it. The closeness is exactly why the arrangement has to change.

You have permission to arrange around it rather than through it, and separating two people for an evening has never once been the same as giving up on them. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the failure out of a practical decision, and it is written in Genesis 13 that the separating was done for the sake of the brotherhood and not against it.

Which frees you from a job you were never given.

You are not the person who has to fix what is between them, and a mother who arranged a smaller table has never once been a mother who took sides. It is written that Abram put the whole land in front of Lot rather than an argument, and the Holy Spirit is the one who releases a woman from a repair that was never hers to do.

The full table was never the only version

Now let me name the assumption underneath the whole thing, because once it is out where you can see it, it stops being persuasive.

The assumption is that this only counts if everybody is there.

Full attendance. All of you round one table. That is the picture in your head, and the picture is why two people's difficulty has managed to cancel four people's evenings.

You are holding a picture that nothing in Scripture ever required, and a household has never once needed to be complete in one room to be a household together. The Spirit of God is the one who takes an unnecessary requirement off a tired woman, and Genesis 13 has two households flourishing in two different valleys without either one being diminished.

And think about what your children have actually lost.

Not the full table. They never had the full table, because the full table has been going wrong for two years. What they lost is every evening with you that did not need to involve the other one.

Your oldest has not sat down with you alone in months. Neither has your youngest. Both of them have been quietly paying for a difficulty that is only about the two of them together.

You have two people who have each been going without, and a problem between two children has never once been a reason for either of them to lose their mother. It is written in Genesis 13 that the answer to a crowded ground was more ground and not less life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who counts what has been quietly given up.

So the smaller table is not the compromise. The smaller table is the thing.

You are able to give somebody an undivided twenty minutes tonight, and one person at a table has never once been a lesser evening than five. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with two people as fully as with a household, and Scripture puts the whole land in front of one man and calls it good.

One of them, on purpose

Here is the instruction, and the two words that matter are on purpose.

Play with one of them tonight, deliberately, without the other one there.

Not by accident, when somebody happens to be out. Choose it. Pick whichever one has sat with you least in the last month and take twenty minutes with that person alone.

You are able to choose somebody on purpose, and a deliberate twenty minutes has never once been the same object as an accidental one. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in a decision rather than in a coincidence, and it is written in Genesis 13 that Abram chose the arrangement rather than waiting for the strife to resolve itself.

And do not explain the arrangement to anybody. This is important.

Do not say we are doing it this way because you two cannot sit together. That takes a private practical decision and hands two children a label to carry around.

Nobody needs to know why the table is small tonight. Small tables are ordinary.

You are allowed to make a quiet arrangement, and a decision that went unexplained has never once been a decision that was dishonest. The Spirit of God is the one who works in something that was never announced, and Genesis 13 records the separating without a single word of blame in either direction.

Then do it again with the other one within the week. That is the whole of it.

You have a week to give both of them the same thing, and two separate twenty minutes have never once added up to less than one hour with everybody in it. It is written that the whole land was in front of them, which is a picture of more room and not of less, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes two small evenings weigh what they weigh.