Everybody Else Is Excited

The whole house had been excited about tomorrow since about four o'clock.

His grandmother rang. His aunt sent a message with three of those little pictures on it. Somebody took a photograph of him standing by the door with the bag, and everybody agreed he looked very grown up, and he did the face you do when a camera is pointed at you and you would rather it were not.

At tea, two people said the same sentence to him. Are you excited.

He said yes. He said it because it is the answer, the way fine is the answer to how are you, and because the room was already excited and there did not seem to be a slot for anything else.

Then it was bedtime, and the house went down to one lamp and one person, and the truth came out sideways, the way it does.

I do not want it to be tomorrow.

His father sat down on the end of the bed. He had a whole speech ready, lining up behind his teeth, and to his great credit he did not use a word of it. It was going to explain that this was a lovely thing, that everyone was proud, and that it would all be fine.

That last one is the one to be careful with. A child remembers whether it was fine. A promise made at half past seven gets checked at half past three the next afternoon, and if the day went badly, the person who made the promise is not somebody to bring the next hard thing to.

So he did not say it would be fine.

He said, I know. It is a lot, and everybody has been loud about it all day.

And the boy's shoulders came down about a centimetre, which is what happens when somebody finally does not argue.

Here is the thing about a house full of excitement. It is not wrong to be excited, and nobody in it is doing anything unkind. But excitement is loud, and a small person who feels something different in the middle of it will usually decide that the something different is a fault. That is the ache tonight. Not the big day. The being the only one.

There is something true to hand him instead of a promise, and it lets him sleep without pretending anything.

Not looking forward to it is not a fault

First, take the mismatch off the table entirely, because that is the part your child is quietly worried about.

Feeling something other than excited about a big day is not ingratitude, not weakness, and not a sign that anything has gone wrong in a small person. It is what a body does when something large is coming and no part of it is familiar yet. Grown adults do exactly this before a first day at a new job, and then they lie awake about it, and nobody thinks they need a talking to.

So do not ask him to cheer up, and do not walk him through the list of reasons this is exciting. He has heard the list. Somebody sent it in a message with three pictures on it.

You are free from having to talk him into a feeling tonight. Zephaniah 3:17 says the Lord your God is with you, He is glad about you, and He quiets you with His love, and it is the Holy Spirit who does that quieting in a small chest at half past seven.

The Lord your God is with you. He is glad about you. He makes you quiet with His love, and He sings over you.Zephaniah 3:17

Look at the order there. He is glad about the person before the day, and before anybody finds out how it went. His gladness is not a report on tomorrow.

You have a child who is not being difficult and was never being ungrateful. His word says He knows how we are made and remembers that we are dust, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is gentle in exactly that way in a bedroom the night before something big.

God gets there first

Here is the sentence to hand him, and it is not a promise about the day. It is a fact about who is in it.

God is already in tomorrow. Not traveling towards it. Already there, in the morning your child has not reached, in the room he has not walked into, at the hour he is dreading, with everything already in front of Him that is still in front of your child. He does not arrive when the alarm goes.

That means your child is not the advance party. He is not the one who has to go first and find out whether it is safe. Somebody has been there since long before this evening, and He is not nervous about any of it.

You are not sending him anywhere on his own, and neither is God. Deuteronomy 31:8 says the Lord goes ahead of you and He is with you, He does not leave you and He does not walk away, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that true tomorrow morning at the door.

Notice what that does not say. It does not say the day will be easy, and this page will not say it either. Some big days are hard the whole way through. What Scripture puts on the table is not a forecast. It is a Person, ahead of him and beside him, in a day nobody in the house has seen yet.

You have permission to hand tomorrow over tonight and stop holding it. Scripture says to give Him everything that is weighing on you because you matter to Him, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes the weight of a morning off a family at the end of an evening.

And you were not left out of this yourself. Psalm 55:22 says give the Lord what you are carrying and He will hold you steady, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding the parent up as well, on a night when the parent is also not particularly excited.