Question deficit syndrome

It was a breezy Rhode Island–like summer day here in Pennsylvania, so I hung out the laundered bedsheets to trap that fresh-air smell inside. Lacking a proper clothesline, I made use of the porch railing and upper story windows.

It brought back memories of my mother standing outside by her wicker basket of washing on breezy mornings like this, reeling out the pulley-rigged rope a foot or two at a time, pinching shirts and trousers to it with the wooden clothespins till the whole affair looked like a gay parade of headless dancers.

Funny that in all those years I watched her do that, I never asked her if she liked hanging laundry outdoors. Not even once. I wonder what she would have said.

She would have been startled at the question, I know. I would have startled myself for asking. For, in fact, I never posed thoughtful questions like that: “Hey, Mom, do you like hanging out clothes?” “Hey, Mom, do you like being a mommy?” “Hey, what’s the best part of the day for you?” “What do you like about those novels you read?” (She was always reading novels in her spare time.)

I have a friend my age who when she was 40 read a book called Letters Never Sent and promptly fell apart. I remember her being out of commission for months. She had been raised a missionary kid and was educated far from her parents (whom she saw only twice a year, except during furlough years) at a boarding school in Africa, separated from even her brother, who was kept in the boys’ wing of the school. Maybe she had “question deficit syndrome.”

It pains me to say (but I will say it if it helps some young mother out there) that not asking thoughtful questions of my children when they were growing up is one of the big failings of my mothering. “J, which is your favorite Transformer, and why?” “H, what do you think about when you’re falling asleep at night?” New Age guru Eckhart Tolle noted in his book The Power of Now that “80 to 90 percent of most people’s thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunction and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful.”

You would think that in all that “repetitive and useless” thinking we would have at least one thought once in a while that blessed somebody’s socks off. One? Surely there is a person at church who arrives alone every Sunday and fields truncated, unmeant “How are yous?” in the foyer, who would burst like a fire hose if someone ever asked her, “Do you have a few minutes to tell me about your jewelry-making business?” (I have a particular woman in mind.)

Ecclesiastes is a book by a king (probably Solomon) who supposedly thought of everything. There is no philosophical stone unturned, no sensual avenue unexplored, no empirical observation unnoted in his quest for the meaning of life. And yet, as my pastor pointed out in his sermon about this pessimistic journal keeper, the guy apparently gave not one thought to the claims of the Pentateuch and Prophets, to which he undoubtedly had access.

The Bible says about the wicked person, “In all his thoughts there is no room for God” (Psalm 10:4). I used to think that was an exaggeration, but it’s not. I lived for decades—as a Christian!—achieving the improbable feat of not once asking God a good question that would have changed my marriage for the better. (Like, “God, can you show me one concrete way I can bless my husband today?”)

God is different. He thinks about us all the time, even when we’re sleeping (Psalm 3:5), and even when we’re hiding from Him (Psalm 139:7). He asks good questions (Jonah 4:4). Though people may go years without thinking of Him (like the Prodigal Son until pig food got old), God seems positively preoccupied with thoughts on how to make life better for us: “You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. … They are more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5).

Let’s be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1). Ask someone a thoughtful question today.