How Long Is Soon

Somebody told him soon, and he has been carrying it around ever since like a coin with no shop to spend it in.

He asked at breakfast, and got soon. He asked in the car, and got soon, love. He asked again at the door of the bathroom while his mother was cleaning her teeth, because that is when children ask the real questions, and she said soon, and then she put the toothbrush down and looked at the wall for a second.

Now it is bedtime and he asks it properly.

How long is soon.

There it is. He has taken the word apart in his head all day and found nothing inside it. Soon is not Tuesday. Soon is not four sleeps. It is a grown up word that sounds like an answer and does not behave like one, and he has finally noticed.

She sat down on the edge of his bed with her hand still damp from the tap.

She had a choice right there, and every parent in this situation has had it. She could round soon down into something with edges. Not long now. Before you know it. By the time the leaves go. It would have bought her ten quiet minutes, and it would have cost her the next hundred nights, because a child who is told a number counts to it, and then arrives at the end of the counting with nothing there and no reason to believe anybody again.

So she did the harder thing, and it took four seconds.

I do not know how long soon is, she said. Nobody has told me either, and I am not going to make one up for you.

He looked at her. Something in his face let go slightly, which is not what you expect when you take away the only date on the calendar. But he had known all day that soon was hollow, and being handed something true and small was better than being handed something big and made up.

Then she said the second half, and the second half is the reason this is written at all.

That bedroom is what this is for. Not the front door, and not the day it happens. Tonight, this ordinary Tuesday, with one person somewhere else and a small person who has run out of ways to ask.

There is something true you can hand a child instead of a date. It holds better, and it does not run out.

Do not turn soon into a number

Start with what you owe your child, because it is not information.

You cannot give a date you do not have, and the temptation to invent a soft one is enormous at half past seven when everybody is tired. Resist it anyway. A borrowed promise costs the child the person who made it, and there is already one person missing from that house tonight.

Honesty here is very short. I do not know. Nobody has told me. I am not going to make one up. Say it plainly and do not decorate it, and then move immediately to the thing you do know, because a child left holding only the not knowing will fill the gap themselves, and what they fill it with is usually worse.

You are allowed to not know, and the not knowing takes nothing away from you. Psalm 145:18 says the Lord is near to everyone who calls on Him, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes near mean near tonight, in the room where you are sitting and in the place you cannot see.

The Lord is near to everyone who calls on Him, to everyone who calls on Him honestly.Psalm 145:18

Read where that verse puts God. Not on the way. Not arriving later. Near, now, to the one calling, and there is no queue and no traveling time.

You have something better than a date in your hands. Scripture says He fills heaven and earth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that short honest fact further into a child than a hopeful guess ever went.

Two rooms, one night

Here is the thing to hand him, and it is worth saying slowly, because it is the whole message.

God is not driving between the two of you. He is not here for the bedtime and then somewhere else for the rest of the night. He does not leave one room to get to the other, because He was never in only one room to begin with. It is one night. It is the same night in both places. And He is near in both, at the same time, without hurrying and without dividing Himself between you.

That is not a poetic way of saying they are in your thoughts. It is a fact about God, and it is the reason a child can lie down without a date.

You are not holding this family together on your own strength tonight. His word says He upholds everything by the word of His power, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the holding while a tired parent falls asleep in a house that is short of one person.

Nothing about this absence is a punishment, and nothing about it is a test somebody is failing. Do not let that idea into the room, in either direction. It is not there because of anything your child did, and it is not there because of anything you did.

You were not left to manage the missing by yourself. Scripture says the Lord is close to the broken hearted, and it is the Holy Spirit who stays in the room long after the light goes off and the house goes quiet.

And you have somewhere to put your own tiredness tonight. Jesus said come to me, all of you who are worn out, and I will give you rest, and it is the Holy Spirit who hands that to a parent doing two jobs at once.