The Calendar on the Fridge Door

There is a paper calendar on the fridge door and a strawberry magnet holding up one corner of it. There is a marker on the shelf above, and the boy in this house is allowed to do the crossing off himself, which was somebody's good idea back at the start.

He does one square a night, on the way up to bed. A big X, corner to corner, with the marker held in a fist.

He can count the squares that are left faster than anybody else in the family, because he has counted them every single evening for weeks.

Tonight he counted them and stopped, and turned round, and asked the question.

"It says nineteen. It was twelve."

His mother had known that was coming since about lunchtime, and she had spent part of the afternoon getting a sentence ready, and standing in the kitchen with the marker lid in her hand she found that none of the sentence was any good.

Because she did not have a number. She had a shrug wearing a smile, and she was not going to hand him that, and she was not going to invent one either, because she had learned what an invented number costs the second time it moves.

So she said the true thing, which was: I do not know.

And he did the thing that goes straight through a parent, which is that he did not argue. He just nodded, and put the lid back on the marker, and went upstairs.

If you have stood in that kitchen, this is written for you.

Because there is something in that house tonight that is not on the fridge door, and it does not move when the number moves.

What the counting was actually for

Start here, because it takes the pressure off both of you at once.

A calendar is a way of counting. It was never a way of deciding. Squares on a fridge door do not hold anybody anywhere and they do not bring anybody anywhere either, and the moment your child works that out, the calendar stops being a promise that keeps breaking and goes back to being a piece of paper.

That is not a small demotion. It is a rescue. A child who believes the number is the promise has to live and die by the number, and the number is not in anybody's hands in that kitchen.

My times are in Your hands.Psalm 31:15

Times. Not dates on a fridge. The whole shape of a life, the going and the staying and the long middle bit where nobody knows, sitting in a hand that is not yours and not your child's and not the person's who is away.

You are not the one who has to know the date. Psalm 31:15 puts the times in His hands and not in yours, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a relief at bedtime rather than a dodge.

We are not going to promise a day here. A day is not ours to give, and a promise that misses does more damage at bedtime than no promise ever did. What we can say is true tonight, was true last night, and does not need a calendar to hold it up.

You were never given a date to hand over, and you do not owe one. Scripture says His ways are higher than ours and His timing is His own, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries an honest I do not know into a child without it landing as bad news.

One more thing, plainly, because children work in causes and they will find one if nobody hands them the right one. This is not a punishment and it is not a test. Nothing your child did put that empty place at the table, and nothing they do tonight is holding it or moving it. That is not a hard sentence. It is a release, because the whole business was never resting on a six year old, and some part of them has been quietly wondering.

One night over two houses

Here is the note this whole category turns on, and it is worth saying slowly, because it is the thing that actually reaches a child at the edge of sleep.

God is not in one place and away from the other.

Am I a God who is only nearby, and not a God far away? Do I not fill heaven and earth?Jeremiah 23:23 and 24

Whatever room that person is in tonight, God is in it. Whatever room your child is in tonight, God is in that one too, at the same hour, in the same dark, without dividing Himself and without leaving anybody to be second in the queue.

You have a child who is held in the very same hour their person is held. Jeremiah 23:24 says He fills heaven and earth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that simultaneous rather than theoretical.

And you do not have to be cheerful about any of this to say it. There is a version of parenting through an absence that requires the one still at home to perform brightness all evening, and it is exhausting and no child has ever been fooled by it.

You are allowed to be flat tonight, and the sentence does not weaken when your voice does. His word says His strength is made perfect in weakness, and the Spirit is the one who carries a plain, tired truth across a bedroom, not the brightness you could not find today.