The Fourth Time Out of Bed

The hall light was the last light burning in that house, and it had been burning a good deal longer than anybody planned.

Once for water. Once for a blanket that had gone sideways. Once for a question about Saturday that could easily have waited until Saturday. And now, the fourth time, a small person in the doorway in socks, holding on to the frame with one hand. Not crying. Not being difficult. Just standing there.

Her mother was on the sofa with the whole day still sitting on her. She had said the kind things at eight o'clock and said them again at half past. Somewhere around the third trip her voice had gone flat, and she heard it go flat while it was happening, and could not stop it going. That was the part she was still turning over when the socks appeared again.

She had no speech left. She had already said there is nothing in there. She had already said I am right down the hall. Every one of those was true, and not one of them was what her daughter had come out for.

So she got up. She walked her back down the hall, eleven seconds that felt considerably longer. She sat on the edge of the bed, because standing over a bed has never once worked, and she laid her hand flat between her daughter's shoulder blades and stopped talking.

Now, if that hallway is yours tonight, this next part is for you.

The twenty minutes of patience you lost is not the headline here. You are not a worse parent at nine forty than you were at seven thirty; you are the same parent, further into the day, with less left. Every parent who has ever lived has run out at the end of an evening, and running out is not the same as failing.

And you do not need a better speech. You need one short true thing, said low, that will still be true tomorrow night when the socks appear in the doorway for the fourth time again.

What the fourth trip is really asking

A child who gets out of bed four times is not running a campaign against you. Four trips is usually one question asked four different ways, and the question is not is there something in there.

The question is is there anybody in there.

Those two are not the same question and they do not have the same answer. That first one has been answered honestly three times tonight and it has not held, and not because it was said badly. It has not held because it was never the thing she was asking.

And you were not failing out there in that hallway. Scripture says that unless the Lord watches over a house, the one keeping watch is awake for nothing, and it is the Holy Spirit who was holding that little room at half past nine, not the steadiness of your voice.

Here is what a small person means by empty. When the lamp clicks off, nothing actually leaves the room. It only stops being visible, and a five year old has not yet learned that invisible and gone are two different words.

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I am not afraid of anything, because You are with me. Your rod and Your staff are a comfort to me.Psalm 23:4

And you have a Shepherd in that hallway with you, and not only in the psalm. Psalm 23 has Him walking the dark stretch alongside His own rather than shouting directions from the bright end, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that a fact in your daughter's room tonight instead of a lovely line on a page.

Read the middle of it again. It does not say the valley was canceled, and it does not say the shepherd handed out courage at the entrance. Company is the whole answer the psalm gives, and it was enough for the man who wrote it.

He was in there before she was

This is the part worth having in your mouth before the lamp clicks tomorrow.

God did not arrive in that bedroom when you finally sat down and prayed. He was in there while the bath was running, and while the story was read badly and fast because it was that kind of evening, and through all four trips, including the one where your voice went flat.

And you are not the first one into that room tonight. Scripture asks where a person could possibly go to get away from His Spirit and answers its own question with nowhere at all, which means the dark end of that hallway was occupied long before either of you walked down it.

That is why nobody in this house has to be brave. Bravery loads the whole night onto a small person who is already tired and quietly makes it her job to be big enough for it. An occupied room asks nobody to be brave in it. It asks them to lie down.

So nothing here hands your child courage tonight. It hands her company, and company is the thing she came down the hall four times to ask for.

And you have nothing left in the tank, and none of this was ever running on what is in your tank. His word says His strength is made perfect in weakness, and the Holy Spirit carries a flat, worn out sentence from a tired parent into a small person just as completely as a warm one.