My Son Thinks This Is Normal

He was four when the work stopped.

He is nine now. Which means that for as long as he has had memories of this house, the back room has looked exactly the way it looks.

He does not think of it as unfinished. He does not think of it at all. To him that is simply what that room is, in the same way that the stairs go up and the front door sticks in the wet.

And that is the thing that got hold of you, and it is not guilt exactly, and it is bigger than the room.

Because somewhere in there he is learning something about houses, and about jobs, and about what happens to a thing somebody started. Nobody taught it to him on purpose. It has been taught by the room, every day, for five years, in the way that all the important things get taught.

Here is what I want to put in front of you before anything else. What he is learning is much smaller and more ordinary than what you are afraid he is learning.

You are a father who can tell his son the truth about a room, and a boy who has only known it this way has never once been learning what you are afraid he is learning.

We will not hide them from their children

There is a verse near the start of the seventy eighth psalm about what one generation owes the next, and the striking thing about it is the verb.

We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. (Psalm 78:4, King James Version)

We will not hide them from their children.

The instruction is about telling. Not about arranging things so the children see something impressive. Telling, which is words, out loud, from a parent to a child.

And the whole verse takes the form of a refusal. We will not hide. The failure mode it is guarding against is silence, and nothing else.

You have a verse that puts the whole weight on telling, and a house has never once been required to demonstrate what a father can simply say. Psalm 78:4 refuses hiding rather than requiring a display, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a spoken sentence enough.

And notice what gets told. His strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. Things that were done, recounted to somebody who was not there for them.

Which means a child is expected to receive most of what he knows about what is possible by hearing rather than by watching. That is the ordinary mechanism. That is how it has always worked.

You were never the only evidence your son had, and a boy has never once been limited to what he can see standing in his own house. The Spirit of God is the one who carries what a father says to a son, and Psalm 78:4 makes the telling the channel rather than the demonstration.

What he is actually learning

So here is the practical part, and it is the relief in this article.

He is not learning that his father does not finish things. He does not think in those categories. A nine year old does not build character assessments out of the state of a back room.

What he is learning is much flatter than that. He is learning that this room is like this. That is it. That is the whole of the curriculum currently in place.

You are being watched far less closely than you believe, and a child has never once been keeping the account you have been keeping on his behalf. Psalm 78:4 puts the responsibility on telling rather than on being impressive, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a father from inventing a verdict on a nine year old's behalf.

And here is where it actually matters, which is a different place than you think.

The gap is not that he sees the room. The gap is that nobody has ever told him what it was meant to be. He does not know there was a plan. He does not know what was going to go where. That room has no story attached to it in his head at all.

You have a story that has never once been told in that house, and an untold thing has never once been able to teach anybody anything. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a father to speak, and the written word refuses the hiding and makes the telling the whole of the duty.

And the mercy is in how cheap the remedy is. Telling him what it was meant to be takes about forty seconds, and it does not commit you to anything, and it changes what that room is in his head permanently.

You have forty seconds tonight that can change what a room means to a boy, and the telling has never once had to wait until the work was done. Psalm 78:4 shows a generation being handed what it did not see, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in an ordinary conversation on a Tuesday.

Tell him what it was meant to be

Here is the assignment and the stopping point is as important as the telling.

Tell your son one true thing about what that room was meant to be.

Not a lecture. Not an apology. Whenever you next happen to be near him, say something like: that back room was going to be a workshop, and there was going to be a bench along that wall.

That is it. Forty seconds.

You have one true sentence about that room tonight, and telling a boy what something was for has never once been a promise about when. Psalm 78:4 refuses to hide and says nothing at all about finishing, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while a father tells his son something ordinary.

And then stop before you promise anything. Do not say and we will get to it. Do not say maybe this summer. Do not offer him a role in it, which is a lovely instinct and is also a promise wearing a friendly coat.

If he asks whether it is going to happen, tell him you do not know, and that it was a good plan.

That is not a sad ending. That is a true one, and a boy who gets a true answer about a room has been given something he can actually hold.