My Son Is Not Speaking To Me

Three years in February.

You know the month. You could probably tell me the week. And you have left something on that step every year since, three times now, and nothing has come back either way.

Not a refusal. Not a returned parcel. Nothing. It goes, and it is gone, and you do not know whether it was picked up by him or by somebody else or at all.

And this year something is different in you, and it is not anger.

It is that you cannot find the reason anymore. For three years there was a reason, and it was that a father leaves something for his son, and that was enough. And this year, when you thought about it, the sentence did not hold the way it used to.

You are not thinking about stopping exactly. You are noticing that you cannot say why you are not.

There is one father in the book who does this and the verse about him contains one word that tells you everything about the three years before it.

His father saw him

Here it is.

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, King James Version)

His father saw him. A great way off.

Sit with that for a second, because it is doing something people rush past. A man does not see somebody a great way off by accident.

You do not spot a figure on a distant road while you are busy indoors. You see a figure on a distant road because you have been looking at that road, and because you have been looking at it for a long time.

You have been doing exactly what that father did, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put that detail in. Luke 15:20 says he saw him a great way off rather than that somebody came and told him, and it is the only evidence in the whole parable of what those years were like for the father.

And there is nothing else about them. Nothing.

The parable does not describe the waiting. It does not tell you what the father did on those days, or how many times he went out to look, or what he thought in the second year. All of it is compressed into one word about eyesight.

You are living inside the part of the story nobody narrates, and it is written only that he saw him a great way off rather than anything about how the years went. The Spirit of God is the one who left that gap, and the gap is where every father in your position has been standing.

And here is the thing about the father in that parable which is worth saying plainly.

He had no answer either. No word, no message, no indication, nothing to go on. For the entire duration of it, he had exactly what you have, which is a road and no news.

You are not short of something that father had, and the Holy Spirit is the one who arranged it that way. The written word gives him no information at all before the moment on the road, and He arranged it so that nobody could say the waiting was easier because somebody knew something.

Now one plain thing, and it is not about the parable.

Three years of this can go somewhere dark, and for some fathers it does. If the nights have got bad, if the thought has arrived that everybody would be better off, that is not a thought to sit with alone on a front step. Call or text 988 in the United States and a person answers. Then tell somebody real: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, somebody qualified who can sit with you in it.

You are worth somebody sitting with you, and it is written that the father saw him rather than that he carried the years alone by design. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a man to say something out loud, and saying it out loud is not weakness in anybody.

What leaving it on the step is

Now let me say what the annual thing on that step actually is, because it keeps getting thought of as a gift and it is not one.

It is not a gift. A gift is given to somebody who takes it.

It is a signal. It says, once a year, without requiring anything of him: the road is still being watched, and nothing has changed at this end.

You have been sending a signal rather than a parcel, and His word tells the whole of three years through a man's eyes on a road. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an unanswered signal carry, and it carries whether or not anybody reports back.

And here is why that matters for the reason you could not find.

The reason was being looked for in the wrong place. There is no reason inside the transaction, because there is no transaction. Nothing goes out and comes back and nothing is completed by anybody.

The reason is what it says. And what it says does not need him to answer for it to be true.

You have a reason that does not depend on a reply, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a thing true without any confirmation. It is written that the father saw him rather than that the father was answered, and the whole of this has been running on that.

And one more thing about him, which you cannot know and is worth holding lightly.

A young man who has not spoken in three years usually knows exactly what is on that step. Silence is not the same as not knowing, and in that parable the son came back with a whole speech prepared, which means he had been thinking about his father for a long time before anybody saw him on any road.

You are probably being thought about, and Scripture has the son arrive with words he had clearly worked on for a while. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what goes on in a son during three years, and there is no window into it from your end.

Leave it again

So here is what to do, and it is the same thing that has been done three times already.

Leave it on the step. Again. This year.

Do not knock. Do not wait in the car to see. Do not put a note on it asking for anything, and do not put a note on it saying you are not asking for anything, which is the same request wearing a coat.

You are able to do it once more without any new reason, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man doing a thing with no feedback in it. Luke 15:20 gives the father an entire stretch of years described only by his eyesight, and He has kept you doing it for three.

And this year, do one thing that is different, and it is not about him.

Tell one person you did it. A brother, a friend, somebody at church, anybody who is not in the family.

Not for sympathy. Because a man doing this entirely alone for three years is carrying a weight the parable never asks anybody to carry alone, and there is no reason for it to stay invisible.

You are able to let one other person know about the step, and it is written that the father is seen by the whole household in that story rather than watching in secret. The Spirit of God is the one who brings one person alongside, and He usually has somebody in mind already.

And then go back to your own day.

Do not build the week around it. Do not check anything. Do not drive past. The signal has been sent and the signal is complete on its own and there is nothing to wait for.

You are finished the moment it is on the step, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is on that road. The written word compresses the whole of the waiting into one line about a man who was looking, and He has been on it the entire three years.