A colleague asks over lunch how your children are. You say they are fine. You say it lightly, and the talk drifts to the weekend.
Fine is the word you have learned to use. The truth would take too long to tell between meetings. Your child is alive and well, and your child no longer answers your messages. Somewhere along the way the door between you closed, and someone else seems to hold the key.
This grief has no funeral, and nobody brings food. Most people never even find out.
A woman in 2 Kings carried a loss that no one around her could see. Her son, the child she never asked for, complained of his head in the harvest field.
"After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and went out." (2 Kings 4:20-21)
She tells no one. She asks her husband for a servant and a donkey so she can ride to the man of God. He cannot see the point of the trip on a day with no festival to mark it.
"'Why go to him today?' he asked. 'It's not the New Moon or the Sabbath.' 'That's all right,' she said." (2 Kings 4:23)
When Elisha's servant runs out to ask after her family, she gives him the same answer.
"Run to meet her and ask her, 'Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?' 'Everything is all right,' she said." (2 Kings 4:26)
Both answers rest on the Hebrew word shalom. Older translations render it, "It is well."
She is guarding her grief from people who cannot carry it. She means to bring it whole to the one person who might.
You give this answer too, at church and at the family dinner where someone mentions the grandchildren. Experience has taught you that some listeners rush to fix things and others rush to take sides. So you say all is well, and you keep walking.
Holding grief for a season can be wise, but no one can carry it forever. The Shunammite keeps her answer only as far as Mount Carmel.
"When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, 'Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me why.'" (2 Kings 4:27)
At his feet, she accuses the prophet of the very thing she feared on the day he promised her a son.
"'Did I ask you for a son, my lord?' she said. 'Didn't I tell you, "Don't raise my hopes"?'" (2 Kings 4:28)
The woman who said "everything is all right" on the road says the bitter thing at the mountain, and God makes room for both.
Gehazi tries to move her along. Grief that stops being polite makes some people uneasy. Elisha will not let him. Her distress has a right to be there.
Elisha also admits that the LORD has not told him why. Your pastor may not know why your child turned away. Your friends may not know either. They can still sit beside you without an explanation.
The question of why can wait. Right now the weight needs somewhere to go.
That place might be a counsellor who understands parental alienation. It might be one friend who will not rush you, or a group of parents who walk the same road. It might begin as honest prayer: "I never asked for this, and I cannot bear to lose it."
Elisha sends Gehazi ahead with his staff. She wants the prophet himself.
"But the child's mother said, 'As surely as the LORD lives and as you live, I will not leave you.' So he got up and followed her." (2 Kings 4:30)
Her hope stayed close to the one who could help, and it would not let go.
Elisha prays behind a shut door and stretches himself over the boy until the small body grows warm. Then he sends for her.
"Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, 'Call the Shunammite.' And he did. When she came, he said, 'Take your son.'" (2 Kings 4:36)
Scripture does not promise that every child who has turned away will come home this side of heaven. It does show a God who hears the cry beneath the "all is well," and who lets the bitter words stand.
You may still say "fine" over lunch tomorrow. That answer can hold for a while. When you reach the mountain, the One who waits there will let no one push you away.
