Lane Five and the Long Walk Back

He touched the wall fourth, and he knew it before he looked up, because a boy who has been swimming since he was six always knows.

Lane five. The father is standing at the end of it, which is where he stands, because he is not only the father, he is also the coach. He has been the coach since the boy was nine. That was not a plan. There was no coach that year and somebody had to do it and he had swum in college and it made sense, and then it kept making sense for the next six years and now it is simply the arrangement.

The boy pulls himself up on the deck and gets his goggles up on his forehead and does not look over yet.

Forty feet.

That is how long it takes to walk from the wall to where his father is standing, and in those forty feet the man works something out that he has been circling for about a year.

He does not know what he says to this boy that is not about swimming.

He knows exactly what he is going to say. The turn was late, and there is a thing about the last twenty-five they have been working on, and he will lead with neither: he will lead with something true about the middle of the race and they will look at the turn on Tuesday. He is good at this. He has never once shouted at this kid and has never once made him feel like a disappointment.

But he cannot remember the last conversation he had with his own son that was not, somewhere in it, about getting better at something.

Nine years. And the boy is fifteen now, and in about three years he is going to be somewhere else, and if you asked that boy what his father thinks of him, he would give you an accurate and detailed answer about his freestyle.

And the forty feet are nearly up.

And you know that walk. You are a good parent and an involved one, and everything you have with a child runs through improvement, and you cannot find the version of yourself that just talks to them.

So take this in before we go a step further. You are more to that boy than the man who tells him how he did, and you always were. Psalm 139:16 says His eyes saw that boy's substance before it was fashioned and every one of his days was written down, and the Holy Spirit is on this deck with you.

The proverb is not a contract

There is a verse about raising children that has done a great deal of damage by being read as a guarantee, and reading it correctly is going to take some pressure off you.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.Proverbs 22:6

First, what kind of sentence it is. It is a proverb. A proverb is a general observation about how life usually runs, not a promise with a name on it, which is why the same book can say that a soft answer turns away wrath without claiming that it always does. Reading proverbs as contracts is how a great many parents end up believing that a child's path is a report card on them.

Second, and this is the part that will help you at the end of lane five. The phrase in the way he should go is, in the Hebrew, closer to according to his way. According to his own bent. The training is meant to be fitted to the child that arrived, rather than to a route the parent selected.

So the verse is not telling you to get a boy onto a track and keep him on it. It is telling you to pay attention to the actual person and train according to what is in him.

You are raising a specific boy with a bent of his own, and the instruction has always pointed at him rather than at a plan. The written word says according to his way rather than according to yours, which means the job was to notice him rather than to route him; and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that onto a pool deck in the forty feet between a wall and a father.

Why a good arrangement became the whole channel

I want to be fair to nine years, because you did not do anything wrong and you are about to be tempted to think you did.

You took the job because there was no coach. That is the beginning and the end of the moral question. And then something happened that nobody could have predicted and everybody in your position experiences: a role with a clear purpose expands into the space where an unclear one used to be.

Coaching gives you a script. There is always something to say after a race. There is never nothing to say. Whereas just being his father at fifteen has no script at all, and a man who has a good script and a blank page will use the script, every time, not out of avoidance but because it is there and it works and the boy responds to it.

Nine years of that and the script is the channel, and it is nobody's fault, and it is not too late.

You were not avoiding him, and the script filled the space because the space was empty. Isaiah 40:11 says he shall gently lead those that are with young, and the word for gently is about pace rather than manner; His Spirit is the one setting that pace, and He is not marking your nine years.

And here is the second half, and it needs saying plainly to a man who is both. The boy has two people at the end of that lane and they are the same person, and he cannot tell which one is going to speak, and he has not been able to tell for six years. That is not a criticism. It is just the situation, and it means that anything you say has a coach's voice mixed into it whether you intend it or not.

Which is why the sentence you say tonight has to happen somewhere the coach does not exist. Not on the deck. Not in the car on the way home if the car is where you review races. Somewhere with no pool in it.

You are not being asked to stop coaching, and the fix is a location rather than a career change. Psalm 78:4 says shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done, which is a handing-over of testimony rather than of technique; the same Spirit who had that written is the one who gave you a year of circling this before you got it.

The forty feet and the low wall

Here is the practical shape.

At the end of lane five, be the coach. Say the true positive thing about the middle of the race and leave the turn for Tuesday, exactly as you were going to, because that is your job and the boy needs it and there is nothing false about it.

And then, later, somewhere with no water in it, sit down next to him on a wall with a bag of food and say one sentence that has nothing to do with swimming.

Not a talk. Not a conversation about how he is feeling about the season. One sentence about who he is and whose he is, said in an ordinary voice, and then hand him the food and talk about something else entirely.

That is the whole of it, and it will feel like almost nothing when you do it, and it will be the first time in nine years that this boy has heard his father say something about him that could not have been said by a coach.

You have a low wall and a bag of food and one sentence, and that is enough to open a channel. Scripture says train up a child according to his own way, and the attention it asks for is to the person rather than to the route; the Holy Spirit is the one who has been at the end of that lane with you for nine years of Saturdays.

So lane five is not the whole relationship. It is a place where a man does a job well, and there is a low wall outside with towels on the fence, and a fifteen-year-old who has about three years left in that house.

And a word for you rather than for them. If what sits under this is heavier than a page can carry, find a real person this week. If it has gone darker than tired, call or text 988.