The One Who Is Not Here Tonight

Every night for as long as Tomás could remember, the same four things happened in the same order.

Water in the blue cup. Blanket pulled up and tucked under, not over, because over is wrong and everybody knows that. The lamp clicked off with one finger. And then two lines of a song, only two, sung quietly by somebody who was not a very good singer and never once cared.

Tonight there is water in the blue cup. The blanket is tucked under. The lamp clicks off.

And then the room is just quiet.

Tomás lies there in the quiet and he does not cry, which surprises everybody, including him. He just lies there with his eyes open and a feeling in his chest that is too big to have a name yet. Somebody told him this afternoon that she is not coming back. He nodded, because that is what you do when a grown up says something in that voice. He has been thinking about it ever since and he still does not really understand what those words are supposed to mean.

So he says the only true thing he has.

"I want her."

And that, right there, is the most honest sentence anybody said in that house all day.

God is holding them, and God is holding you

A note for the grown up, before you read anything out loud. This part is for you and it is not read to the child.

You do not have to explain it. You will feel enormous pressure to explain it, because a child is asking a question and you are the one who is supposed to have answers, and the silence at the end of their question is very hard to sit in. But no six year old ever needed the mechanics. Scripture itself is spare about the mechanics and generous about the holding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the holding land where an explanation would not. They need to know that the person is held, and that they themselves are held, and that they are allowed to keep missing.

So here is what these lines do, and what they will not do.

They will not tell your child that she was taken, or that she was needed somewhere else, or that God wanted her. Those sentences are meant kindly and they land in a child as a picture of God coming into the house and removing somebody. That picture is very hard to get back out again.

They will not use sleep as the picture, ever. Your child has to sleep tonight, in that bed, in that room.

And you are not required to explain death to a six year old tonight. Scripture hands you a shepherd with a lamb in his arm rather than a diagram, and the Spirit is the one who makes a picture do what an explanation cannot.

And they will not ask your child to stop missing. Missing somebody is what love does when the person is not in the room. It is not a problem to be solved and it is not a stage to be got through by Thursday. It sits down beside a small person at exactly the hour the lamp goes off, every night for a while, and the kindest thing you can do is let it sit there with the light on it and God in the room.

One more thing, and it holds for whoever it is. A grandmother. A father. A mother. A brother or a sister. The dog who slept against the bedroom door every night since before your child was born. None of these is the small one. Whoever your child is missing tonight is the one this is for, and the missing is the size the missing is.

Here is what is true, and it is the oldest picture in the book. The God your child is talking to in the dark is described as a shepherd, and shepherds do not merely watch the flock from a distance. The lambs, the little ones who cannot keep up, get carried.

He tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arm and carries them against his chest, and he gently leads the ones with young.Isaiah 40:11

Read it again slowly, because there are two things in it and your child needs both.

There is an arm, and there is a chest. Somebody is gathered up and somebody is carried close. That is where the person your child is missing is: not lost, not misplaced, not gone somewhere nobody can find. Held.

And your child is a lamb in exactly the same sentence. The same arm. The same chest. The same shepherd, in this room, tonight, at this hour, with the lamp off and the missing sitting on the end of the bed.

Two lambs. One arm. That is the whole message, and a six year old can hold it.

And you are carried in that same sentence, not only your child. Isaiah 40:11 says he gently leads those that have their young, and the Spirit is the one who carries the parent who is doing the carrying.