Nobody Can Agree On Where

The problem in this house is not that nobody wants to go.

The problem is that five people want to go to five different places, and every one of them can explain exactly why the other four are wrong.

You know the shape of the evening by heart. Somebody says the water. Somebody else says they went to the water last time and it was too far and somebody was sick in the car. Somebody says the city. Somebody says they hate the city. The nine year old wants the place with the animals and the fifteen year old will not be seen at the place with the animals. And then it is a discussion about who always gets their way, which is a completely different discussion, and by the end of it nobody is going anywhere and two people are annoyed.

So you do what a reasonable man does, which is say we will talk about it later.

And that has been the state of things for two years.

Here is what I want to say to you at the front. This is not a family with a bad attitude. This is a family with a decision procedure that does not work, and the procedure is the problem, not the people.

You have been trying to decide by consensus. And consensus, in a house with five opinions and a history, is not a procedure. It is a fight with better manners.

Without counsel purposes are disappointed

There is a proverb about decisions that gets used in business books and almost never in kitchens, and the kitchen is where it belongs.

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established. (Proverbs 15:22, King James Version)

Read the two halves carefully, because the second half is not saying what people usually think it says.

The first half is easy. A purpose with nobody consulted falls over. Fine. That has never once been the trouble here. Everybody in this house has been consulted at enormous length.

The second half says that with many advisers, purposes are established. Established. Made to stand. And that is the part your household never reaches, because you have the multitude and you have never once got to the establishing.

You have the counsel already and what is missing is the establishing, and no amount of further discussion has ever once been able to supply it. Proverbs 15:22 puts the goal at a purpose that stands rather than at a purpose everybody praises, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a father that his house is stuck at the wrong end of the verse.

Because a purpose is not established by agreement. Look at the word. A thing is established when it is settled, fixed, no longer up for discussion. Agreement is one way to get there. It is not the only way, and in a family of five it is not usually an available way.

You are able to settle a thing that not everybody agreed on, and settling it has never once required you to win an argument first. It is written that purposes are established rather than merely discussed, which is why the last step belongs to somebody deciding, and His Spirit is the one who gives a man the nerve to end a conversation kindly.

The lot fell, and nobody was overruled

Now, here is the move, and I want you to hear why it is not a gimmick.

Right through the Bible, when a group of people who all had a legitimate say needed a thing settled and argument was not going to do it, they drew lots. The land was divided that way. Matthias was chosen that way. It appears in Proverbs too, that the lot causes contentions to cease.

And the reason it works has nothing to do with luck. It works because it takes the decision out of the space where people are competing for standing.

That is the real fight in your kitchen. It is not about the water or the animals. It is about who counts. When the fifteen year old fights the nine year old about a destination, the destination is the surface of it.

You are not refereeing a fight about a destination, and no evening of that argument has ever once been about the place any of them named. It is written that purposes are established rather than won, which is why the surface of an argument is never where the answer sits, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a father what the room is actually about.

A drawn name removes that entirely. Nobody won. Nobody was overruled by a parent. Nobody's preference was judged inferior. The paper came out of the cup.

You are able to end the competition for standing in this house without settling who is right, and that has never once been you avoiding your job as a father. The Spirit of God is the one who defuses the thing under an argument rather than the argument itself, and Proverbs 15 puts the establishing of a purpose above the winning of a point.

And it protects you specifically. Because at the moment, any decision you make is a decision against three people, and you know it, and that is a large part of why you keep saying we will talk about it later.

You have a way out of being the one who disappoints somebody every time, and refusing to be the villain has never once made you a weak head of this house. It is written that in the multitude of advisers purposes are established, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is present at a kitchen table where a father is about to hand a cup to a child.

Four names in a cup

So here is the assignment, and do it this week while there is still momentum in you.

Write four places on four pieces of paper. Let the youngest draw one. Go to that one.

Here is how to run it so it holds.

Everybody gets to put one place in. One. Including you. It has to be somewhere you could actually go on one day with the money you actually have, and that constraint gets stated before anybody names anything, so nobody has to be told no afterward.

You are able to set the limit before anybody names a place, and stating it first has never once been the same thing as refusing somebody afterward. Proverbs 15:22 puts the establishing at the end of the counsel rather than the beginning, which is why the rules come before the slips, and the Spirit of God is at that table while a father says them out loud.

Then the youngest draws, because the youngest has the least standing in every other argument in this house and this is the one thing they get to do.

And then, and this is the whole of it: that is where you go. No renegotiation. No but actually. No swapping it for the second one because the drawn one is awkward.

You are able to hold a decision that a drawn slip of paper made, and holding it has never once been the same thing as not caring where you end up. Proverbs 15:22 has purposes being established rather than endlessly weighed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a father's mouth closed for the fifteen seconds after the paper comes out.

Say all of that out loud before you write a single word on a slip. The rules first, then the paper. People accept an outcome they agreed the rules of, and they fight an outcome that was sprung on them.