The Room That Is Not Your Room

The spare room at her grandmother's house has the bed under the window. At home the bed is against the wall by the door. That is the whole problem, and it is much bigger than it sounds.

Everything in the room is fine. The blanket is heavier than her one at home and smells faintly of the cupboard it lives in. There is a shelf of somebody else's books, the sort with hard covers and gold along the edges. The lamp has its switch halfway down the wire instead of on the base, so you have to feel along the flex to find it, and she found it three times before supper just to be sure she could.

Her father did all the right things. He put her toothbrush in a glass by the sink so she would know which one was hers. He hung her bag on the door handle where she could see it. He sat on the edge of the bed while she said her prayers, and then he pressed the little switch on the wire, and the room went dark.

And she said the thing.

"It is the wrong dark."

He knew exactly what she meant and had absolutely nothing to say about it. At home the dark has a shape. The hall light comes underneath the door in a stripe she could draw from memory with her eyes shut. Here the stripe is along the other side. Here the ceiling is further away than it should be. Here there is a click every so often from the boiler in the airing cupboard, and it is not a frightening click, it is simply not her click.

So he sat back down. He did not put the lamp on again, because she had not asked for it, and something told him that was not what she was asking for either.

If you are the one sitting on that bed tonight, in a room that is not your room, at the end of a day of driving and unpacking and being cheerful about it, this is written for you. You do not need a better answer than the one you already have. You need a shorter one.

The dark did not change houses

Hear what your child is actually telling you, because it is not what it sounds like.

They are not saying this room is frightening. They are saying this room is unfamiliar, and a small person has only one instrument for reading a room after the light goes off, and that instrument is memory. At home the memory is complete, down to the stripe under the door. Here there is nothing to check the dark against, so the checking never finishes.

Which means a better description of the room will not help. The question is not what is in here. The question is who.

You are not the one who has to make this room safe tonight. Genesis 28:16 has a man wake in a borrowed place with a stone under his head and say the Lord is in this place and I did not know it, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that as true in a spare room in August as it was on that hillside.

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.Genesis 28:16

Read the last five words slowly, because they are the mercy in the verse. He did not know it. Nothing about that hillside became holy when he noticed. It had been holy while he was asleep on it, and his noticing was the only thing that changed.

That is the sentence for tonight. Not make this room safe. Simply notice out loud who is already in it.

You were not asked to bring God with you in the car. Scripture says He fills heaven and earth, and the Holy Spirit was in that room while the beds were being aired and the towels were being put out, long before the suitcase came up the stairs.

Occupancy, and never bravery

There is a sentence forming in your mouth right now and it is there is nothing to be afraid of. It is perfectly true and it will not work, and it is worth knowing why. It answers a question about the room. Your child asked a question about the company.

So do not hand them courage tonight. Hand them the roll call.

You are not required to sound certain for this to be true. The written word does not go quiet at the end of a long day, and the Holy Spirit carries a flat, tired sentence into a small person just as well as a beautiful one.

And take this off the table before it ever gets said. Nobody in that bed has to be brave. Bravery quietly makes the night a small person's job, and then a hard night becomes a report card on how well they did it. It is not their job and there is no report card. The dark is not empty, so nobody has to be brave in it, and children can feel the difference between those two rooms long before they can explain it.

You have a house tonight even though the house is not yours. Psalm 90:1 says the Lord has been our dwelling place in every generation, and the Holy Spirit makes that a real address in a spare room with a heavy blanket and somebody else's books on the shelf.