The Decision About His Father

He is the one who lives forty minutes away. That is the whole of why it is his, and everybody involved knows it, and nobody has said it out loud.

His father is eighty-three and has had two falls, and the second one was worse than the first and there was a night in the hospital and a conversation with a woman who was kind and used the word options. There are three of those, roughly, and the man knows what all three are, and he has had a legal pad in the truck for five weeks with almost nothing written on it.

Three siblings. One two states away who rings the father every Sunday and has strong views. One who does not ring and will say nothing until afterward and then will say something. And one who is genuinely helpful and who will agree with whatever he decides, which sounds like relief and is in fact its own weight, because it means the whole thing is his.

He is fifty-five. And what he has been circling for five weeks is not which option. He could argue any of the three well. What he cannot find is a place to stand while he decides, because every position is inside somebody's opinion. From his sister's view. From what his father would have said ten years ago. From the version of himself that has to live with it at seventy.

Anybody who has been the one who has to choose knows this. And I am going to say plainly, up front, that I am not going to tell anybody what to do about their father. I do not know that man, or that family, or that house. Anybody who hands out a decision like this from a distance is not helping.

Given liberally, and without upbraiding

Let me put a line down and look at the two conditions attached to the offer, because they are both about God's manner rather than the person's worthiness.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.James 1:5

Liberally means generously, without measuring it out. And upbraideth not is the phrase that does the real work: it means without reproach, without a comment about how you should have known, without a remark about this being the third time somebody has asked this month.

James puts that in because he knew exactly what stops people asking. Not doubt about whether God has wisdom. A quiet certainty that asking will come with a look.

You are able to ask without the look, and the promise attaches the manner to God rather than the merit to you. That is not a soft word for a man with an empty legal pad. It is what is written in James 1, and His Spirit is the one who takes a written line and puts it under somebody leaning on a gate. The decision is a decision. The giving is generous and it comes without comment.

And notice where that verse sits. It is directly after James writes about trials of many kinds, which means the wisdom being offered is not academic wisdom for a calm week. It is offered specifically to somebody in the middle of something.

You have wisdom available in the middle of this rather than after it, and the offer was aimed at exactly this kind of week. James 1:5 is where that stands, and it is the Spirit who makes an old letter land at a gate at the end of the day.

Nobody is going to be told what to do

Now the part this category exists for, and it comes first because everything else is worthless without it.

Five weeks of an almost empty legal pad is not weakness. A man who could argue all three options well is not indecisive, he is somebody who can see. And the reason this is hard is not that he lacks character. It is that the decision genuinely has no clean answer and he is being asked to make it anyway.

I am not going to lean. Not toward the house, not toward the facility, not toward the moving in. Not with a story where the person who chose one thing was obviously right, which is the way most articles cheat. I do not know his father's health, his own back, his wife, his work, his money or the layout of anybody's house.

What I will do is take one thing off him, because I think it is the heaviest thing in the truck.

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee.Psalm 55:22

He is carrying two loads. The decision, which is genuinely his. And the outcome, which is not, and never was, and could not be made his by any amount of care.

You were never given custody of how this turns out, and you have been carrying it for five weeks anyway. Psalm 55:22 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man put down a weight he was never assigned.

You are steady right now, at this gate, with an almost empty page and three siblings who will each have something to say. It is written that wisdom is given liberally and without upbraiding, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that true in a man who lives forty minutes away and got the whole thing by geography.

If any of this ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question for your father or for you, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and talk to a doctor, a social worker or a counselor about what is actually being asked. Decisions like this are made better with real people in the room, and being steadied by God has never been a reason to make it in a truck alone.