I Say No To Everything

You have become the man who says no, and you can hear yourself doing it.

Can we go to the place with the boats. No. Can we do the thing everybody at school is doing. No. Can we get the thing on the way home. Not today. Can we go away this summer like last year. Probably not.

And every single one of those is correct. You have checked. It is not caution and it is not meanness. There is a number and the number is the number.

But you have started to hate the sound of your own voice.

Because a child does not hear the arithmetic behind it. A child hears no, from Dad, again. And you can see them stop asking, one at a time, which is worse than the asking was.

And there is something specific that has happened in you that I want to name, because it is not the money and it is the thing doing the harm.

You have stopped looking for yeses.

Not deliberately. It is efficient. When the answer to almost everything is no, a man stops running the calculation and starts answering from a standing position, and so the small things that would have been yes get refused with the same voice as the large ones.

That is what I want to work on today. Not the number. The standing position.

According to that a man hath

There is a verse in the second letter to Corinthians about giving that has the most generous piece of arithmetic in the Bible in it.

For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not. (2 Corinthians 8:12, King James Version)

You have a measure in the written word that is set to what a man has, and no gift of yours has ever once been weighed against what this house does not have. 2 Corinthians 8:12 puts the willing mind first and then measures by what is actually in hand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a father who has been marking himself against a number he cannot reach.

Read the order in it, because the order is everything. First a willing mind. Then acceptance. And the acceptance is calibrated to what a man has, and explicitly not to what he does not have.

That last clause is doing a lot of work: not according to that he hath not. That is a deliberate exclusion. The thing you do not have is not on the scale.

You are not being measured against the thing you cannot give, and no month of that arithmetic has ever once counted against you. It is written that acceptance follows what a man has rather than what he lacks, which is why the shortfall is not on the scale at all, and the Spirit of God is what takes a father off a measure he was never on.

And the willing mind comes first. Which means the willingness is the substance and the size is the detail. That is the exact inversion of how it works in your kitchen at the moment, where the size decides and the willingness never gets to speak.

You have a willing mind and it has already been counted, and the size of what follows it has never once been what made it count. The Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man that his wanting to give was received before he gave anything, and 2 Corinthians 8 puts the willing mind at the front of the sentence.

The standing no is the problem

Now the practical part, and it is about a habit rather than about money.

When a man is short for a long time, he stops calculating. Every request meets the same answer because running the numbers on each one is exhausting and the answer has been no for two years.

That is reasonable, and it is also the thing costing your children something.

You are not a man who stopped caring what they wanted, and two years of an efficient answer has never once been the same thing as a closed door. 2 Corinthians 8:12 measures a gift by what is in a man's hand rather than by how fast he answered, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a father the difference between a habit and a heart.

Because in among all the requests that genuinely cannot happen, there are some that can. Small ones. Things that cost almost nothing or nothing at all, that would have got a yes if anybody had actually looked at them.

And they are getting no as well, because they arrive in the same shape and meet the same standing answer.

You are able to look at one request instead of answering from a standing position, and looking at it has never once obliged you to say yes. The Spirit of God is what breaks a reflex in a man that two years of arithmetic put there, and 2 Corinthians 8:12 measures each gift against what is actually in hand rather than against a rule.

So the work here is narrow. Find the requests that are actually within reach and separate them out.

And here is what your children will take from that, which is why it is worth the trouble. Children do not count the yeses. What they build their picture from is whether asking is worth doing. One yes a week keeps the asking alive. Nothing else does.

You are able to keep them asking, and that has never once depended on the answer being yes most of the time. It is written that a willing mind is accepted according to what a man has, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a household's requests coming to a father who cannot meet most of them.

Find one yes and say it out loud

So here is the assignment.

Find one thing you can say yes to this week at the size you actually have. And say yes to it out loud.

The finding is the work. Sit for four minutes and go back over the requests of the last week or so. My guess is that at least one of them costs nothing, and got a no anyway because it arrived in the middle of everything else.

You are able to find a yes that was already there, and it has never once required this month to be different. 2 Corinthians 8:12 excludes what a man does not have from the measure entirely, and the Spirit of God is with a father sitting at a table going back over a week.

Then say it out loud, and say it as a yes rather than as a concession. Not, all right, fine, we can do that I suppose. Say: yes. Let us do that on Saturday.

Because the tone is what they will keep. A yes given as if it were reluctantly extracted teaches a child that asking costs their father something, and then they stop.

You are able to give a yes gladly rather than as something dragged out of you, and the size of the thing has never once decided how it lands. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts gladness into a father's voice on a Tuesday evening, and 2 Corinthians 8 has the willing mind coming before the amount.

And it does not have to be a plan. Yes to going to look at the boats is not a trip. It is twenty minutes and a walk.