They Still Ask Freely

My kids ask for things like they expect to get them.

Not rudely. Not spoiled. Just… freely. A new game or gadget, a detour for ice cream, more time on their phones — they ask the way you'd ask someone who loves you and has never once given them a reason to brace. No flinch. No pre-apology. No little hedge to soften the disappointment they've already decided is coming.

What surprised me is that they still do it. They're both in their teenage years now — old enough, I'd have guessed, to have picked up the habit the rest of us carry. And they haven't, at least they are not all their yet. They still walk up and ask like the answer might just be yes.

I've started paying attention to that, because I don't do it anymore. And I want to understand what they still have that I traded away. Recently, I commented to my wife about how I realized that I no longer often ask God for things I need or want, and the reality is that I cannot pinpoint why I don’t.

The flinch we call maturity

Somewhere along the line, most of us learned to ask for less.

We'd call it being realistic. Not getting our hopes up. Being mature. But if I'm honest, a lot of what I file under "maturity" is really just a flinch — a bracing for the no before it comes. Whenever I do, I notice that I've asked God for things the same careful way I'd ask a busy stranger for a favor: apologetically, half-expecting to be turned down, already rehearsing how I'll be fine when I am.

I don't think I decided to become that person. It accumulated. A few disappointments, a few doors that didn't open, and eventually the safest thing seemed to be wanting less so there was less to lose. We mistake that shrinking for wisdom. Often it's just old bruises wearing a respectable coat.

What the kids actually know

Here's what I keep bumping into when I watch mine: their free asking isn't naïveté. It's not that they've never heard no. They have. It's that a single no hasn't yet convinced them that no is the shape of the world.

That's the part I'd lost. Not the knowledge that disappointment exists — I've got plenty of that. What I'd lost was the deeper, steadier expectation underneath the disappointment: that good is still on the table. That the one being asked is good. That it's okay to want things and say so.

And when I read the Bible with that in mind, I notice it keeps pointing the same direction. Ask, and it will be given to you. Come like children. The posture it commends isn't the careful, braced, hope-managing one I've perfected. It's closer to the way my kids cross a room to ask for something they really want.

I don't think that's a promise that every answer is yes. My kids don't get every yes either. It's something underneath the answer — a trust that the One they're asking is for them, not against them. They've kept that. I'm trying to get it back.

But isn't that just setting yourself up?

This is where the skeptic in me speaks up, and he's worth answering. Isn't free asking a fast track to being crushed? Won't expecting good just make the disappointments land harder?

I used to think so. But I've started to suspect the opposite. The braced, expect-nothing posture doesn't actually protect me — it just makes sure I miss the good that does come, because I've already decided not to look for it. Low expectations don't prevent pain. They only prevent hope, which is a worse trade than it sounds.

Asking freely doesn't mean pretending every answer will be the one I want. It means refusing to let disappointment rewrite my whole picture of God and of what's possible. My kids will get told no this week, and it won't turn them into flinchers. That resilience isn't in spite of their free asking. It's part of it.

Where this leaves us

I'm not writing this as someone who's recovered the thing. I'm writing as a father who caught his kids doing something he used to do, and wants it back badly enough to pay attention.

So I'm trying to ask more freely — in prayer, in my marriage, in the quiet hopes I'd stopped saying out loud because saying them felt like risking too much. It's slow. The flinch is a deep habit. But every so often I catch myself asking for something good without the pre-loaded apology, and it feels less like being childish and more like being finally, properly childlike.

My kids haven't forgotten how to do this. Maybe they're not the ones with something to learn.

Let's rekindle this, on purpose.

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Discovering the truths and letting them dictate our lives rather than circumstances.

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