One Bad Trip Eleven Years Ago

There was a trip, eleven years ago, and it was bad.

Not funny bad. Not the kind that turns into a story. Something happened that nobody has wanted to talk about since, and everybody in this family can tell you the year without thinking about it.

And here is the strange thing, which is why I am writing to you.

Nobody ever decided to stop going places. There was no conversation. Nobody said we are not doing that again. It closed over on its own, the way a path closes when nobody walks it, and by the time anyone noticed, it had been years, and the not going had become simply what this family is like.

That is what I want to look at with you today. Not the trip. The closing over.

Because a thing that was never decided can be reopened without anybody having to admit they were wrong, and that is a far easier door than you think you are standing in front of.

And Isaac digged again the wells

There is a verse in Genesis about a man reopening what somebody else had filled in, and I have never heard it preached but I have needed it many times.

Abraham dug wells. After he died, the people around them filled them in with dirt. And then his son comes along, years later, and does this.

And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham: and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. (Genesis 26:18, King James Version)

Look at what is going on there, because every part of it maps onto your house.

The wells were not gone. They were stopped. Filled in, covered over, invisible from the surface, and still exactly where they had always been. Nobody had to find new water. The water was already there under the dirt.

You have not lost the thing this family used to do, and eleven years of it being covered over has never once meant the water underneath went away. Genesis 26:18 has a man digging again in a place that was already a well rather than prospecting somewhere new, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a father that the ground he is standing on is not barren.

And notice how they got stopped. Not by a decision. By dirt, over time, because nobody was tending them.

That is exactly how your household stopped going places. Nobody chose it. It filled in.

You are not looking at a decision this family made, and no year of the silence since has ever once been a verdict any of you actually reached. It is written that the wells were stopped rather than abandoned, which is the difference between neglect and a choice, and the Spirit of God is what makes that distinction land in a man who has been carrying it as a failure.

And then the last clause, which is the one that undoes me. He called their names after the names his father called them.

He did not pretend it was new. He did not rebrand it. He dug in the same place and used the old name, out loud.

You are able to use the old name for this, and naming what happened has never once been the same thing as reliving it. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a family speak about a bad year without the year taking the room over again, and Genesis 26 has a man calling the wells by the names they already had.

The dirt is the not talking

Now the practical part, and it is smaller and harder than a plan.

What is filling in this well is not the memory of what happened. It is that nobody says it out loud.

Think about how it works in your house. Somebody nearly mentions it. There is a small adjustment in the room, a change of subject, the kind of thing everybody performs without knowing they are performing it. And that adjustment is the dirt. Every time it happens, another handful goes in.

And because nobody speaks about it, the story has never been finished. It sits in this family in exactly the shape it had eleven years ago, with all of the same weight, because nothing has been allowed to touch it.

You are able to say a sentence out loud that this house has been going around for eleven years, and saying it has never once made it bigger than it already is. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a family finally names a thing plainly, and it is written that the stopped wells were dug again by hand rather than left because they were awkward.

I am not asking for a family meeting. Nothing about this needs to be an occasion. In fact an occasion would make it worse, because an occasion tells everybody in advance that this is a serious matter and they should brace.

One person. One sentence. Sideways, while something else is happening.

You have permission to do this quietly with one person, and doing it small has never once been you avoiding the real conversation. Genesis 26:18 records a man digging in the same ground his father dug rather than calling a council, and the Holy Spirit is what makes one honest sentence do the work of a whole afternoon.

Say it, then name somewhere small

So here is the assignment, and there are two halves.

First: say out loud to one person what happened on that trip.

Whoever is easiest. Your wife, one of the children who is old enough to remember, whoever is in the kitchen. And say it plainly, the way you would say a fact. That week was bad, and I think we quietly stopped going anywhere afterward, and I do not think we ever actually decided that.

That is the whole sentence. Do not analyze it and do not ask anybody to respond to it.

You are handing a family the words it has never had for this, and that has never once required you to explain or defend anything. It is written that a man dug again and called the wells by their old names, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps the room steady while somebody says the true thing out loud.

Second: in the same conversation, name one small place you could go instead.

Small, near, cheap, and not the place it happened. An hour away at the outside. Half a day. Something with no weight on it at all, because the point is not the destination, it is that this family does the thing again in a place with nothing attached to it.

You are able to dig in easier ground first, and starting somewhere with no history has never once been the same thing as running away from the old place. Genesis 26 has a man reopening wells one at a time rather than all at once, and the Holy Spirit is the one who chooses the order for a household that has been still for a long time.