I Changed The Locks And I Do Not Sleep

The locksmith came on a Tuesday at about eleven in the morning and it took him nineteen minutes.

Miguel stood in the hallway the whole time. He does not know why. There was nothing to supervise and the man clearly did not want the company, and Miguel stood there anyway with his arms folded like a foreman on a job he had not wanted to order.

It was his wife's decision as much as his. He wants that written down and it is true, and it does not help.

They did it after the thing with the television and the two hundred dollars from the tin in the pantry, which was not the worst thing, and they both knew it was not the worst thing. It was simply the one that came after twelve others, on the wrong week, at the end of about four years.

Their son is twenty-nine.

He came round on the Thursday. He did not shout and he did not break anything and that is the part Miguel cannot get out of his head, because he had prepared himself for shouting. He knocked and he tried the key and it did not go and he looked up at the window and Miguel was standing there.

And his son did not say anything at all. He put the key in his pocket and walked back down the path.

It has been eleven weeks.

Miguel goes to bed at eleven and lies there until about two and then he gets up, and he has done that most nights since. He is fifty-eight and he has worked outdoors his whole life and he has never had trouble sleeping in his life until eleven weeks ago.

I did the right thing. Everybody says I did the right thing. And I put my own son out on a path, and I have not had a night since.

And here is where I stop talking about Miguel, because you had to shut a door, and everybody has told you it was right, and none of them are awake at two.

Let me say the first thing before anything else. This message is not going to relitigate your decision. I am not going to tell you it was right and I am not going to tell you it was wrong, because I was not in that house and it is not mine to rule on. What I am going to deal with is the two in the morning, because that is where you actually are.

He slept, and the reason given is not the situation

Let me put the true thing down first, because it is aimed at two in the morning and nothing else.

You are allowed to sleep, and sleeping is not a verdict on your love. There is a man in Scripture who slept in the worst circumstances a father can have, and he says why: And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.Psalm 3:5

Now look at what is happening around that verse, because it changes everything about it.

The heading on that psalm says it was written when David fled from Absalom, his son. His own son was in armed rebellion against him and was hunting him, and there was no resolution and no reconciliation and the outcome was entirely unknown and would turn out badly.

And in the middle of that a father writes: I lay down and slept.

Read the reason he gives, because it is the whole of the point. Not: the situation improved. Not: I had made peace with it. For the Lord sustained me. The sleeping rests on God holding him up, and it happened while everything was still wrong.

So rest is available to a father in an unresolved situation, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own comfort, and God's Spirit is not in that hallway at two in the morning agreeing that you have forfeited your sleep. The Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into the room you are actually in.

The lying awake is not doing anything

Now let me be honest with you, the way somebody has to be.

Ask what the two in the morning produces.

It does not reach your son. It does not put him anywhere safer than he is. It has not changed one outcome in eleven weeks, and you know that, and you do it anyway, and there is a reason.

The reason is that lying awake feels like a payment. It feels like the only thing left that a father can do, and stopping feels like closing the account and walking away, and no father can bear that.

So hear this: you have not closed anything. A lock on a door is not a lock on a heart, and God has not required you to be sleepless in order for your love to count. Your son has a father who is standing for him, awake or asleep, and the standing is not measured in hours of insomnia.

And here is what does reach: prayer reaches him, at two in the morning, in whatever room he is in, and it goes where you cannot. A door that is shut can be spoken through and you can tell him, when you see him, that it is shut against a behavior and not against a person. A steady household reaches your wife, who is also awake and also not saying so.

That is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something a man can lie down inside rather than something people say to him at church.

And the plain half, because a message without it has failed you. There is real help for you, and none of it is small faith. Family groups for people who love somebody using are full of parents who have changed locks, and there is not one thing you could say in that room that would be new. A counselor for you is not abandoning him. And if he is ever in danger, if he has used more than he meant to, get medical help immediately, and in the United States he or you can call or text 988 at any hour. There are people awake right now, and if he ever comes to that door in that condition, that is a call and not a locked door.