The bag has been by the door since half past six, because that was the one job she was given and she did it straight away and then did it twice more.
Inside: pajamas, the small gray elephant, a book she has already read, and a pair of socks she chose herself. She checked the zip. Then she came back down the hall and checked the zip.
Tomorrow there is an appointment at the hospital. The grown-ups have explained it. They explained it in the car, and again at tea, and once more with the calendar out on the table, in the calm and level voice people use for a thing they are trying to make small. Everything they said was true, and kind, and clear.
And she still cannot picture it.
That is the whole difficulty, and it is not a failure of the explaining. A child under seven builds tomorrow out of pictures. She has a picture for school. She has a picture for her grandmother's flat, right down to the smell of the hallway. She has no picture at all for this, and where the picture should be there is a blank, and a blank never stays blank. It fills itself in.
So at half past eight she is not lying there thinking about tomorrow. She is lying there thinking about a gap.
Her father is on the edge of the bed and he has used everything he had. He has explained it again. He has said it will be all right, which he does not actually know, and which she noticed him not knowing. He has offered another story. He has pointed out that the elephant is in the bag.
Now he is just sitting there, which is honest, and which is not nothing.
If that is your bed and your hallway tonight, this next part is yours. There is one short thing to say into that gap. It is not a promise about how the day goes, because nobody can make that one honestly. It is better than that, and it holds up in the morning either way.
A blank is not the same as a bad picture
Start here, because it changes what you say.
She is not frightened of the day. She has no day yet. She is frightened of the space where the day is supposed to be, and no further explaining fills it, because explaining is made of words and she is trying to build a picture. That is why the third telling landed no better than the first, and it is not because anybody explained it badly.
What goes into a gap is not information. It is a person.
You are not sending her anywhere by herself tomorrow. Isaiah 41:13 says God takes hold of the right hand and says do not be afraid, and the Holy Spirit does that at seven in the morning exactly as easily as He is doing it at eight at night.
I am the Lord your God, and I take hold of your right hand. I say to you, do not be afraid. I am here to help you.Isaiah 41:13
Notice what the verse does not do. It does not tell anybody what the day contains. It does not promise a good result, or a short wait, or a kind face at the desk. It says whose hand is holding hers while it happens, and then it says it in the present tense, tonight, before anything has started.
That is a far more useful thing to hand a small person than a forecast, and it has the advantage of still being true at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon whatever the day has turned out to be.
You have been carrying tomorrow all evening, and it was never yours to carry on your own. Scripture says He goes ahead of us and does not leave us, and the Holy Spirit is already standing in a room neither of you has walked into.
What not to promise, and what to say instead
Do not tell her the day will go well.
It is the kindest sentence in the house and it is the one to leave out, because a child files it. If the day is long, or dull, or uncomfortable, or simply not what she was told, she does not conclude that a parent was being loving. She concludes that the information from grown-ups at bedtime is not reliable, and you will want that information to be reliable on some other night, about something else.
So say the thing you actually know. Not what tomorrow holds. Who is in it.
You were not asked to make her brave. Psalm 121:8 says the Lord watches over the going out and the coming in, and the Holy Spirit does that watching whether or not anybody in this house feels watched over tonight.
And here is the part that settles a small person more than anything else in this message: she is not the advance party. She is not going first, into an empty place, to see what it is like and report back. God is not meeting her at the door tomorrow. He is in that building tonight while she is in her pajamas, and He was there last week, and He will still be there long after the appointment is a thing that happened once.
She arrives second. That is a completely different journey from the one she is imagining.
You are allowed to say that you do not know what it looks like. The written word says His mercies are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit meets tomorrow morning long before anybody in the house is awake in it.
One short thing, said low, said twice, in a room where the bag is already by the door.
You are handing tomorrow over, not talking it up. His word says we can come to Him and find help at the exact moment it is needed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a small person put a whole day down and go to sleep.
A note for you, before you say it out loud. Leave out the reassurance. Say it flat and slow, the way you would say what time the bus goes, because the flatness is what makes it sound like a fact rather than a hope. And do not add anything on the end. The temptation at the last second is to tack on and it is going to be fine, and that one sentence quietly undoes the four before it, because she will weigh them all by the one she cannot check.
Then say this part out loud, and say it twice:
God is already in tomorrow, and He got there before us. He is holding your right hand the whole way, and He does not let go of it in the corridor. You do not have to go first, and you do not have to be brave. The bag is by the door, and you can go to sleep now.
Then stop. Let it be quiet, and let the day stay where it has just been put.
Declare this over yourself
Say these with her, not at her. You say a line, she says it back, the two of them doing nothing more than agreeing out loud with something that was true before either of you said a word.
And say them standing on something. Christ in you is where the authority comes from, and it belongs to you as her parent, in this house, tonight, however tired the day has left you. God may answer in His own way and in His timing, and however He answers, nothing about tomorrow is her fault or yours, and nothing about it rests on how well she sleeps tonight.
- Tomorrow, you do not get here before God does. He is already in that room, and my bag is by the door.
- Fear, you cannot go in front of me, in the name of Jesus. God is holding my hand tonight and He is holding it tomorrow.
- God, You get there first. You hold my right hand, and Jesus goes in with me.
Isaiah 41:13
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