His son was eleven. That is the part he cannot get around, whichever way he comes at it.
There was a season, about two years long, when he was not the father he meant to be. Nothing anybody would have reported. He was there, he provided, he turned up to things. He was also, for about two years, absolutely unavailable, and there were three or four specific occasions in that stretch that he can still see in full color, and one of them involves a school hall and a boy looking round for a face that was not there.
His son is thirty now. They get on. They talk about the truck and the fishing and the boy's own children, and it is genuinely warm and not performed.
And in nineteen years, that season has never come up. Not once, not obliquely, not in an argument.
He has taken that as a mercy for a long time. Lately he has begun to suspect it is something else, and he has no way of finding out which, because the only way to find out is to raise it.
And here is what he has never said to anybody in this world: he does not know whether his son does not remember, or whether his son remembers every single one of those occasions and has chosen, for nineteen years, not to make his father carry it.
Name the actual risk
Let me not go past this politely, because a man in this position has usually had it gone past politely by everybody he has ever half hinted at it with.
The risk is real and it runs in two directions. If you raise it and he does not remember, you have handed a thirty year old man a wound he did not have this morning. If you raise it and he remembers all of it, you have opened something he has kept closed, deliberately, for nineteen years, and you do not know what is behind that door.
Both of those are genuine possibilities and neither of them is small. And nobody, including this page, can tell you which one you would be walking into.
You are weighing a real thing and the weighing is not procrastination. That is not a kind reading somebody is offering. Psalm 139:2 says He understands your thought from far off, which includes nineteen years of a man turning something over in a truck, and the Holy Spirit is the one raising it now to hand you a first step rather than to push you into a conversation.
And the parable everybody knows has one line in it that is usually read as a homecoming and is actually about a father moving first.
And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.Luke 15:20
A great way off. The distance was still there. Nothing had been said, nothing had been explained, the speech the son had prepared had not been delivered yet, and the father was already running.
Jesus put that in on purpose. The moving happened before the conversation, and it happened from the father's end, and the distance was not closed first.
Going first is not the same as forcing a conversation
You are not required to sit your son down. There is a version of this that would be about your relief rather than about him, and you already know that, which is why nineteen years have gone by.
What is available is smaller and it is genuinely yours: to stop treating that season as a thing that never happened, in your own mind and in front of God, out loud, in full, before any human being is involved at all.
You are able to name it accurately without handing it to anybody, and naming it is a real act rather than a rehearsal for one. Scripture puts it plainly in 1 John 1:9, where confession meets a God who is faithful and just to forgive and to cleanse, and the Holy Spirit is at work in your son's life today whether that conversation ever happens or not.
Where your part ends
Say this plainly and do not soften it. Going first is never the same as walking into harm, and nothing here asks anybody into anything unsafe. If raising this would put your son back into something he has worked hard to get out of, then do not raise it, and let no line here be used to push you. Get whoever is at risk safe, tell one real person who can actually do something, and hold this: safety comes before peace, every single time.
And this too: nothing here requires a conversation with your son. The step at the bottom of this page happens with nobody in the room, and if it is the only step you ever take it is a real one.
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.Psalm 147:3
Bindeth up. That is what somebody does to a wound that is actually there rather than to one being imagined. You are being tended in the part of this that is yours, and the tending does not wait on a conversation happening. Psalm 147:3 puts the healing in God's hands rather than in your son's response, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the binding, at whatever pace nineteen years takes.
Your son was never the enemy, and his silence is not a sentence. Whatever the reason for nineteen years of not mentioning it, he has spent those nineteen years turning up, talking about the truck, and letting his children love their grandfather.
What is costing you is not the two years. It is that you have been holding a thing unnamed for nineteen more, and unnamed things get heavier rather than lighter, whatever anybody else remembers.
> Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. > 1 Peter 5:7
The whole of it. Not the presentable part. You are able to hand over the exact occasions you can still see in full color, and the reason given is His care rather than your having earned a hearing. 1 Peter 5:7 grounds the casting in His affection rather than in your worthiness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives what a man says out loud at a lake at dusk.
Nothing here tells you to raise it with your son, this year or ever. That is genuinely yours and no article should touch it. What is being handed to you is smaller and much heavier than a conversation: the thing said out loud at last, in full, to somebody who was there for all of it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, standing where you are. Not in your head. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to name what is true about your own life was given to you, and no silence can issue it or take it back. Scripture is the ground under every word, and the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than loud.
Jesus set the measure at a seed, and He did not put it that low to shame anybody with how little he was holding. He put it there because no mountain ever moved on the size of a man's faith. It moved because somebody opened his mouth at it. So speak, and leave the outcome with Him, because whatever He does with my son is His and always was.
- Nineteen years of not mentioning it, you are not the same thing as forgetting and God has never treated you that way. Luke 15:20 has a father running while the distance was still there and before one word of the speech had been said. In the name of Jesus I am done waiting for him to raise it.
- Fear that naming it would hand him a wound he does not have, you have no authority at this water tonight. The Holy Spirit is at work in my son today, and 1 John 1:9 says confession meets a God who is faithful and just and it never once required a witness. I am his father today, and I am saying it out loud.
- Lord, You were in that school hall when he looked round for a face that was not there. I thank You, because Your word says the acknowledging and the forgiving arrive in the same breath, and You have not held nineteen years of my silence against me. Whatever You do with him is Yours, and the three occasions are named, and they are Yours now.
Luke 15:20
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