They Still Quote A Wet Saturday

They still talk about a Saturday six years ago when it rained the whole time, and they have never once mentioned the week that cost you three thousand.

You have thought about that more than you have admitted to anybody.

Not with resentment. You are not that kind of man and it is not that kind of feeling. It is bafflement, and underneath the bafflement, a small suspicion that you got something wrong on the expensive week that you never identified.

Here is what happened on the Saturday, as far as you can reconstruct it. It rained from about ten. You went out anyway because you had said you would. You walked somewhere and got extremely wet and came home and ate something and that was the day.

And that is the one they quote. Your eldest referenced it to somebody at the door last month.

So let me do two things. Let me tell you what was in that Saturday, because there is an answer and it is knowable. And then let me take the suspicion about the expensive week off you, because it is not true.

When your children shall ask

There is an instruction in Joshua about a pile of stones and about what children do, and the shape of it is the whole answer to your question.

And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. (Joshua 4:21, King James Version)

You have a pattern in the written word where a plain physical thing becomes the thing children ask about, and no cost has ever once been what made a marker into one. Joshua 4:21 has twelve ordinary stones become the thing that gets asked about for generations, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man why the wet Saturday stuck and the week did not.

Look at what the marker is. Stones out of a riverbed. Free, heavy, and not beautiful.

And look at what makes them work. They are unusual enough to be asked about, and they are attached to a story with a difficulty in it. Israel came over on dry land, which is only a story because the water was a problem.

You are able to see what a marker is actually made of, and it has never once been the amount that was spent on it. It is written in Joshua 4:21 that the stones prompt the question what mean these stones, which is a question about an oddity rather than about an expense, and the Spirit of God is what makes an ordinary object into a thing a family asks about.

That is your wet Saturday. It was unusual, because it rained and you went anyway. And it had a difficulty in it, which is the getting soaked. Both of those are exactly what a memory needs, and neither of them can be bought.

You are able to give this family the thing a memory is made from, and no version of it has ever once had a price attached to it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a difficult ordinary afternoon into what a household tells, and Joshua 4 has children asking about stones rather than about anything that cost anybody a shekel.

The week did not fail

Now the other half, and I want to be direct about it, because I think the suspicion is doing you damage.

The expensive week did not fail. Nothing went wrong on it. Your children are not failing to mention it because it was bad.

They are not mentioning it because it had nothing odd in it. That is genuinely all. It was smooth, and comfortable, and everything worked, and smoothness produces no questions, and questions are what a story is made of.

You are not a man who mishandled that week, and no silence about it has ever once been a verdict on anything you did. The Spirit of God is what lifts a suspicion off a man without requiring evidence, and it is written that the stones existed to prompt a question, which is a thing only oddity produces.

And there is something else, which is worth having plainly. A week away is one story to a child. Not seven. One, and often not even that, because the whole thing merges into a single warm undifferentiated block.

The wet Saturday is a discrete event with a beginning and a middle and a soaking in it. That is one story, complete, with edges.

You are able to stop comparing seven days to one afternoon, and the count has never once been what decided which of them got told. It is written that the children ask what mean these stones, about one specific pile in one specific place, and the Holy Spirit is the one who releases a man from an arithmetic he has been running for six years.

So the three thousand bought a good week that everybody enjoyed and nobody tells, and the Saturday cost nothing and produced a story. Both of those are fine, and neither is a report on you, and there is no lesson in it about spending money.

The only usable lesson is that the ingredients are cheap and unpredictable, and you cannot manufacture them, and you can put yourself in their way more often.

You are able to put yourself in the way of it more often without being able to produce it, and no week has ever once failed because a man could not manufacture the ingredient. Joshua 4:21 has the stones lifted out of a riverbed rather than made, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies the part of a day that nobody can arrange.

Ask him, and write down what he says

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately about information rather than about action.

Ask one of your sons what they remember about that Saturday. And write down what they say.

Ask casually and ask specifically. Not do you remember that Saturday, which gets a yes. Ask: what is the bit you actually remember about the wet Saturday.

You are able to ask a question you have been answering yourself for six years, and asking it has never once been you being unable to work something out. Joshua 4:21 puts the asking in the children's mouths and the telling in the father's, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a man stops deducing and opens his mouth.

You are able to ask rather than reconstruct, and asking has never once been you fishing for anything. Joshua 4:21 has the children doing the asking and the fathers doing the telling, and the Spirit of God is with a man asking his own son a plain question in a car.

And then write it down. Actually write it, in a note or on paper, in his words rather than yours.

Two reasons, and the second one matters more. The first is that your reconstruction is wrong. Almost certainly it was some detail nobody in your household has ever mentioned.

The second is that a written answer stops the reconstructing. You have spent six years working out what made that day, and an answer in his own words ends the project, and the project has been quietly costing you.

You are able to end a six year question with one sentence from your own son, and the answer has never once been something you could work out on your own. It is written that the fathers tell the children the plain fact rather than the meaning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a man finally asks instead of deducing.

And do not follow it up. Do not ask why, and do not tell him about the expensive week or that you have been thinking about this. Ask, listen, write it down, and let the conversation move on.