Nobody Is Saving It Up

It was Saturday, and she was still awake at twenty to ten, which was the fourth night in a row.

Her father had been up twice already. The first time it was a drink. The second time it was nothing she could name, and he had sat on the end of the bed a while and then gone back down, and the light under her door had stayed off but the eyes above the blanket had stayed open.

On the third trip he did not ask what was wrong. He just sat down and waited, which is a thing that takes longer and works better.

And after a good while, into the dark, she said that on Wednesday at school she had said something horrible to somebody, and that she kept hearing herself say it.

That was the whole of it. Not a crime. A sentence, said fast, at lunchtime, four days ago, by a seven year old to another seven year old.

But it had been at the front of her head every night since Wednesday, and every night she had played it again and tried to say it differently, and every night it came out the same way it actually happened, because that is how the replaying works. And underneath the replaying was the thing she had not said out loud yet, which was the real reason she was awake.

She thought it was still coming. Not the telling off, which had already happened or had not. The reckoning. The moment somebody sits her down and finally deals with her.

Now, if that is the room you are standing in tonight, the rest of this is for you.

What is keeping her awake is not the wrong. It is the waiting. And the only thing that ends waiting is somebody she trusts saying the same word twice: finished.

The ache is the replaying, not the wrong

Do not go back over what she did. Do not ask her to tell it again, do not improve her account of it, and above all do not help her work out how bad it was on a scale. A child rehearsing a twenty second scene for four nights is not short of information about it. She has been the prosecution, the defense and the jury every night this week, and she keeps returning the same verdict, which is guilty and still waiting.

And be careful of the tidy trap here, which is asking whether she is really sorry. She has been sorry since Wednesday. That is precisely why she is awake.

And you are not being asked to make her sorry enough first. Scripture never sets a level of feeling that has to be reached before God forgives, and it is the Holy Spirit who settles a small conscience, not a satisfactory show of remorse at bedtime.

If something does need putting right with the other child, that is a daytime job and a grown up goes with her to do it. It is not a bedtime job. Nothing about tonight requires her to fix anything, and handing a seven year old a task at twenty to ten simply gives the replaying something new to work with.

Tonight has one job. Finished.

What God does with Wednesday

I am the One who wipes out the wrong you did, for My own sake, and I do not bring it to mind again.Isaiah 43:25

Look at the two halves of that. The first half is the forgiving, which most children have heard about. The second half is the one that will actually let her sleep.

He does not bring it up again.

That is the fear underneath a replaying child, and it is worth naming plainly, because small people almost never say it out loud. They are not afraid that they were bad on Wednesday. They are afraid that Wednesday is filed somewhere, and that it comes out later, and that everybody who was kind about it is simply waiting for the right moment.

And you have a God who does not keep a file on your daughter. Isaiah 43 says He wipes it out and does not bring it to mind again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land in a seven year old at the end of a long week.

Notice why He says He does it, too. For My own sake. Not because she got sorry enough or explained herself well. It is the kind of God He is, and it does not turn on her performance in the slightest.

And you were forgiven the same way, on the same terms, with nothing owing. His word says He removes it as far as the east is from the west, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a tired parent able to say finished and mean it about somebody else's Wednesday and their own.