The Mad Feeling and the Missing Feeling

At teatime the plate came back almost full, pushed forward about four inches, which in that house is a whole speech.

Nothing was said about it. There had been enough said this week.

Then, at half past seven, with teeth done and the hat still folded on the pillow where it has been every night since, your child picked it up, looked at it for a second, and dropped it over the side of the bed onto the floor.

"I do not want it there."

You picked it up. You did not say anything clever, because there is nothing clever, and because the sentence underneath that one had already arrived in the room and you both heard it.

I am cross with them.

And then, two seconds later, the second thing, which is the one that actually hurts, said into the duvet and not to you.

"I am not supposed to be cross."

That is the part that will keep a six year old awake. Not the empty side of the table. The private, awful arithmetic that says if you miss somebody you have to be nice about it, and that a cross feeling means something is wrong with you.

So they lie there holding two feelings that will not fit in the same chest, and go quiet about it, which is the worst outcome and the most likely one.

And you are standing at the end of the bed with the hat in your hand, wanting to fix something that cannot be fixed tonight.

That is the room this is written for. Not a lesson about feelings. Half past seven, a hat on the floor, and a small person who thinks they have done something wrong by minding.

There is a true thing to say into that. It is short, it promises nothing about when, and it lets both feelings stay.

Cross and missing are the same feeling in two coats

A child who is cross with somebody who is away is almost always a child who misses them so much it has grown edges.

Anger is what love does when it cannot reach. Grown-ups do the same and dress it up better. A small person has none of that dressing up available, so it arrives plain: a plate pushed forward, a hat on the floor.

So do not correct it. This is the hinge of the whole night. A child told off for the cross feeling learns that the feeling is the crime, and next time it will not be brought out at bedtime. It will be taken into the bed and held alone, and a small person alone with a big feeling is what nobody wants.

And do not say the person would be sad to hear it. That hands a six year old the job of protecting a grown-up's feelings from a distance they cannot even picture, and it is not a job a child should ever be given.

And you are not being asked to talk anybody out of anything tonight. Psalm 62:8 says to pour out your heart to Him because God is a safe place, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that shelter real in a bedroom at half past seven rather than a nice idea in a book.

Trust Him at all times. Pour out your heart to Him. God is a safe place for us.Psalm 62:8

Pour out means all of it. Not the tidied version. The Psalms are full of people saying exactly what they think in plain, unpolished words, some of it furious, and not one of them was sent out of the room for it.

That is the doorway your child needs opened tonight. The cross feeling is allowed out loud, to you and to God, and nothing bad happens when it is.

And you have a child in that bed who is angry and completely safe at the same time. Scripture says nothing in all creation separates us from the love of God, and the Spirit is the one who makes that hold at the exact moment a hat hits the floor.

What is true tonight, and what must not be promised

Here is where a tired parent gets talked into something at bedtime, and it is worth deciding before the moment arrives.

Do not give a date. Not a soft one, not a nearly one, not a probably. A date said at bedtime to settle a room is borrowed against a night nobody has met yet, and when it fails the child does not just lose the date. They lose you as somebody whose bedtime words hold.

And you were not handed the job of explaining where everybody is by half past seven. His word never asks a parent to have the answers, and the Holy Spirit does the carrying in the places where nobody has one.

Say something else instead, and say the same thing tomorrow.

God sees them right now, wherever they are. God is in this room right now, with us. Both of those are true at the same moment, and neither one waits on anybody being good enough for it.

And say the other half plainly, because a child will supply their own reason if nobody gives them one. This is not a punishment. Nobody is away because your child was not good enough, and God did not take somebody off to teach anyone a lesson. A six year old doing sums in the dark about their own behavior needs that said out loud.

And you are covering that bed tonight with something you did not manufacture. God promised to be near to the brokenhearted, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that near, not the steadiness of your voice at the end of a long week.

One more, and it is the one most often got wrong with good intentions. Do not ask your child to be good while the person is away, or brave, or a big help. Nothing about tonight is a small person's job.

And you have a household that is not resting on a six year old. Scripture says He carries the lambs close and gently leads those with young, and the Spirit is doing the carrying in both directions in that house tonight.