She Cries Without A Sound And Will Not Say Why

The silent ones are worse and nobody warns you about that.

A loud cry has a shape. Something happened, and you can usually find it, and finding it gives you a job. Even when the job is hard you know what you are doing.

This is different. She is sitting there and her face is wet and nothing is coming out of it at all, and when you ask, she shakes her head, and that shake is not defiance. It is genuinely nothing. She does not have it either.

And what happens in you in that moment is a kind of scramble. You start generating candidates. School. A friend. Something you said at breakfast. The thing on the page. Something you did not notice on Saturday.

And every candidate you offer gets the same small headshake, and each one makes the room a little smaller.

I want to stop the scramble, because I think the scramble is costing you the only thing you actually have to give.

Thou understandest my thought afar off

There is a line in Psalm 139 that is usually quoted to say God knows everything. Read it again with your daughter in the room.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. (Psalm 139:2, King James Version)

Downsitting and uprising. The most ordinary movements there are. Sitting down at a table. Getting up from one. Nothing dramatic, nothing spiritual looking, just a body in a kitchen.

And then: thou understandest my thought afar off. Not merely knows it, and not only when it is spoken. Understands it from a distance, before it has been formed into anything sayable.

That is a picture of somebody being known from outside their own vocabulary. Which is exactly the situation your daughter is in right now.

You are sitting beside a child who is fully understood by Someone even while she cannot say a word of it, and that has never once depended on her finding the language first. Psalm 139:2 puts the understanding afar off and before the speech, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that something a parent can lean on in an actual kitchen.

And notice what the psalm does not do. It does not require David to explain himself as a condition of being known. The knowing goes first.

You have been trying to be told before you are willing to be present, and the order has never once been that way round in scripture. The written word has the understanding arrive before the thought is even formed, and the Spirit of God is the one who can sit with what has not been said.

Why the questions make it worse

Here is the mechanical part, and it is worth knowing because it will stop you doing something that feels loving and is not landing.

When a child cannot name what is wrong, every question is a small test they are failing.

You ask: is it school. Headshake. Is it your friend. Headshake. Did something happen. Headshake.

From the outside that is a parent hunting for the cause. From the inside it is a series of things she cannot answer, and the pile of things she cannot answer is already the problem.

You are able to stop running a test that nobody can pass, and stopping has never once been the same thing as giving up on her. Psalm 139:2 describes understanding that reaches a thought before it is sayable, and the Holy Spirit is the one who releases a parent from having to be told.

There is something else underneath, and it is about you rather than her.

The scramble is not really about finding the cause. It is about getting out of the discomfort of sitting in a room where something is wrong and you cannot fix it. That state is genuinely horrible, and the questions are a way of doing something.

That is not a fault. It is love with nowhere to go. But it has the effect of putting your discomfort into her lap, and she has no capacity for it tonight.

You are permitted to carry your own discomfort for ten minutes rather than handing it over, and that has never once been an unkindness to anybody. The written word shows a God who understands from afar without demanding an account, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds an adult steady in a room with no answer in it.

You have something to give that does not require any information at all, and presence has never once been a lesser gift than a solution. Psalm 139:2 names the ordinary sitting down and getting up as the things God attends to, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes ordinary sitting into ministry.

Ten minutes, and ask nothing

So here is the assignment, and it is almost nothing, and that is deliberate.

Sit beside her for ten minutes and ask nothing at all.

Not one question. Not a gentle one. Not you know you can tell me anything, which is a question wearing a coat.

You are allowed to bring nothing into the room except yourself, and nothing has never once been what a child in that state experiences it as. Psalm 139:2 attends to a body sitting down rather than to an account of the trouble, and the Spirit of God is the one who fills what a parent cannot.

Sit there. Do something small with your hands if you need to. Put a hand on her back if that is welcome in your house, and take it away if it is not.

If she says something, listen and do not follow it up with three more questions. Say something short. That sounds hard. Or just: yeah.

And when the ten minutes ends, say one sentence before you get up. Something like: I am around.

That is the whole thing.

Psalm 139:2 describes a knowing that arrives before the thought is formed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a quiet room where a parent asks nothing.

You are able to stay in a room without solving it, and staying has never once been the smaller act of the two. The written word puts the understanding ahead of the speaking, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in ten minutes of somebody not asking.

You were never going to get the answer tonight, and the evening has never once depended on getting it. Psalm 139:2 attends to the downsitting rather than to the explanation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that enough for a parent at half past seven.