The Top Of The Stairs

She is eight, sitting on the second step from the top with her knees pulled up inside her nightdress and her back against the spindles.

The sound comes up through the floor as a shape rather than words. Loud, then a gap, then loud again. She has her hands over her ears, then off her ears, because she has to know whether it has stopped.

And she has a plan. That is the part nobody upstairs usually knows about.

She has worked out exactly what she would say. She has said it in her head four times, and adjusted it, and moved a word. If she went down now and stood in the doorway and said her sentence, perhaps the loud would stop. Perhaps everybody would look at her and it would all be finished and she could go to bed.

Her hand is already on the newel post at the top.

She does not go. She sits on the step where the stairs turn and the carpet has that worn patch, rehearsing a sentence a person of eight should never have had to write.

Then the stairs creak, and somebody comes up and sits on the step below hers without saying anything for a bit. Stairs are for grown ups to come up. That is what stairs are for tonight.

"I was going to come down," she says.

"I know. You do not have to."

That step is what this is written for. Not a lesson about being brave, and not one word about who was loud or why. A small person with a plan she should never have needed, and a grown up one step lower with no clever sentence available and nothing to offer except being there.

There is something true to say on that staircase, and it is short, and it takes a job off a child rather than giving her one.

What the plan on the stairs actually is

A child at the top of the stairs is not being nosy or disobedient. She is doing what a small person does when something big happens in her house, which is look for the part of it that belongs to her.

And when she cannot find a part, she invents one. The plan is that invention: if this is happening in my house, there must be something I could do, so I will think of a sentence and go and say it.

That is a job. Nobody handed it to her. She picked it up off the floor because it was lying there and nobody had said out loud that it was not hers.

You are the one who gets to say out loud that it was never hers. Scripture says He is close to the broken hearted, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reaches a small person on a staircase quicker than any of us can think what to say.

Say it plainly, because a child needs it plain. Grown up things belong to grown ups. The loud is not hers, stopping the loud is not hers, going down is not hers, and none of it was ever hers, on any night, in any house.

She does not need to know what it was about, and she should not carry anything back down, not a word, not a message, not a peacemaking sentence, not even a kind one. A child is not a bridge between adults, and a child who becomes one stops being a child far earlier than she should.

You have a child who was never the reason and is never the repair. His word says every one of us is knitted together and fully known, and the Spirit is the one who makes that land in a small person in language they can actually hold.

And one more thing, said without a threshold on it, because a child cannot be the judge of what counts. If anything in the house ever frightens her or hurts her, telling a grown up she trusts is right, always, and she never has to work out first whether it was bad enough. Telling is always allowed. Put that sentence in her hands on a quiet night too, so it is already there when it is needed.

Allowed to be small

Here is the release, and it is the whole point of this one.

Come to Me, all of you who are worn out and carrying heavy things, and I will give you rest.Matthew 11:28

Read who that is addressed to. Not the strong. Not the ones coping well. The worn out and the ones carrying something too heavy, which on that staircase is a person of eight with a rehearsed sentence and both hands over her ears.

The invitation is to put it down. Not to carry it better, not to be braver about it, not to be more helpful with it. Put it down, and be given rest instead.

You were never asked to be a perfect house before that verse applies to it. Scripture says His mercies are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit does not wait for a good evening before He fills a room.

That is why the word tonight is small, and why small is not an insult. It means the roof is not hers to hold up and the noise is not hers to switch off. A child who is allowed to be small can go to sleep. A child who has quietly been promoted cannot, because nobody sleeps on duty.

You are allowed to be tired in this, and tired is not the same as failing. Matthew 11 says come to Me, all of you who are worn out, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a real invitation to a real person rather than a nice line on a wall.

Nobody up those stairs has to be brave, either. Bravery hands the night back to her with a ribbon on it, and it is not her night to hold.