One Of Ours Makes Every Trip Difficult

Everybody else gets to be excited about the trip.

You are the one who is already awake at four in the morning three weeks out, running through the parts of it that will not work.

The car. The food. The place with too many people in it. The bit where the plan changes without warning and he cannot do it and the whole day turns into managing that in front of strangers.

And here is the thing you carry that nobody knows about, and it is the reason I am writing this article.

You dread going anywhere with him. And you love him more than your own life. And you cannot hold those two facts in the same hand, so you keep the first one hidden, from your family and mostly from yourself.

Then, because it is hidden, it grows. And it turns into something worse than dread, which is a low hum of guilt that runs under every conversation about going anywhere.

I am not going to give you a method today. There is no method in this article. What I am going to do is take that second thing off you, because it is not true and it is doing more harm than the trip ever could.

Fearfully and wonderfully made

There is a verse in the hundred and thirty ninth Psalm that gets put on cards, and read properly it is stranger and better than the card version.

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. (Psalm 139:14, King James Version)

You have a child the written word calls fearfully and wonderfully made, and no hard morning of the last nine years has ever once amended that sentence. Psalm 139:14 states the making as a finished fact rather than as a hope about how somebody turns out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says it over a specific child in a specific bedroom.

Look at the word fearfully, because it is not the word people expect. It does not mean frightening. It carries the sense of awe, of something made with such care that it is almost unnerving to consider.

And it is not conditional. The verse does not say fearfully and wonderfully made, on the good days. It is a statement about how a person was assembled, said by somebody who had every reason to feel like an exception.

You are not raising a child who came out wrong, and no part of what he finds hard has ever once been a fault in how he was put together. It is written that the making is fearful and wonderful and that the works are the LORD's own, which is why nothing here is a defect to be corrected, and the Spirit of God is what makes that land on a mother at four in the morning.

Now read the second half, which almost nobody quotes and which is the part for you. And that my soul knoweth right well.

The Psalmist says he knows it well. Which means it is a thing he has had to know, deliberately, probably against something. Nobody says they know a thing right well about something that has never been in question.

You are able to know this about him deliberately rather than feel it automatically, and having to choose it has never once made it less true. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a sentence steady in a woman on a morning when nothing in her wants to agree with it, and Psalm 139 has the knowing as an act rather than as a mood.

Two true things, one hand

Now the part I actually came to do, which is about the two things you cannot hold together.

You dread the trip. That is a real feeling, and it is accurate. Going somewhere with a child who finds going somewhere hard is more work than going somewhere with a child who does not. That is not a bad attitude. That is arithmetic.

And you love him. Also real, also obvious to anybody who has watched you for ten minutes.

The reason those two feel like they cannot both be true is that you have quietly accepted a rule nobody ever said out loud: that loving a child properly means finding everything about them easy.

You were never given a rule like that, and no dread you have ever felt has once been evidence against your love for this boy. The Spirit of God is what separates a feeling from a verdict in a mother, and Psalm 139:14 speaks of a person's making without mentioning how easy anybody found them.

That rule is not in Scripture. It is not anywhere. Parents who love their children find specific things about them hard, always, and the ones who say otherwise are being polite.

You are able to say the hard sentence out loud without it becoming a betrayal, and naming the dread has never once handed anything away. It is written that a soul can know a thing right well, deliberately, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives an honest sentence from a tired mother as prayer rather than as complaint.

And here is what happens when you stop hiding the first fact. The guilt goes. Not the difficulty, the guilt. And the guilt is the part that was making you short with him, because a person managing their own guilt has less patience available than a person who is simply tired.

You are able to be tired without being guilty, and the tiredness on its own has never once made you worse at this. The Spirit of God is what takes the second weight off a woman while leaving her honest about the first, and Psalm 139 puts the making of a person entirely on God's side of the account.

Ask him, and do not fix it

So here is the assignment, and there is a hard rule in it.

Ask that child one question about what they find hardest. Then listen without fixing it.

The question first, and keep it narrow. Not what is wrong, which is unanswerable. Ask something specific: when we go somewhere, what is the worst bit for you.

You are able to ask him rather than work it out, and asking has never once been you admitting you do not know your own child. Psalm 139:14 has the making known right well by the soul that considers it, and the Spirit of God is with a mother sitting on the floor of a bedroom asking a plain question.

He may not answer well. He may say nothing, or say something that sounds odd, or name something you would never have guessed, like the smell of a particular kind of building or not knowing where the bathroom is.

Whatever he says, take it seriously and do not improve it.

And now the hard rule, which is the whole exercise: do not fix it. Not in that conversation. Do not say we can sort that out. Do not start planning out loud.

You are able to let an answer stand without solving it in the same breath, and leaving it alone has never once been you failing to help him. It is written that the works of the LORD are fearful and wonderful, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a quiet room where a child has just been believed rather than managed.

Because the moment you move to fixing, he learns that telling you a hard thing produces a plan, and a plan is a thing he then has to cope with. And so next time, he will not tell you.

Say something like: that sounds hard. Thank you for telling me. And then let it be quiet.