The Torch Under the Pillow

The torch lives under his pillow, and everybody in that house knows it.

It is a small one with a rubber grip, the kind that comes in a pack of two. He clicks it on. He holds his hand over the front and watches his own fingers go red and gold. Then he clicks it off, slides it back under, and lies down flat, like a boy who is going to sleep now.

Nine minutes later, click. He is checking it again.

His mother has bought batteries twice this month. She is not annoyed about the batteries. She is standing in the hallway with a basket of washing on her hip, listening to that small click through the door, and what she feels is not annoyance at all.

She had already said the sensible things, and she had said them kindly. There is nothing in your room. I am right down the hall. The torch works, love, you checked it, you checked it twice.

Every one of those sentences was true. Not one of them was the thing he was asking about.

Because a boy who checks a torch nine times is not running a test on a torch. He is asking the same question again in the only way he has. The click is the question. The little beam on his hand is an answer that holds for about nine minutes, and then it runs out, the way a small answer does.

So she put the basket down on the landing and went in and sat on the floor with her back against his bed, which is what you do when the sensible sentences are gone and you are still not leaving.

She did not take the torch away. That is worth saying out loud, because somewhere a voice tells parents that the torch is the problem, and that a braver child would not need one. He is six. Let him keep his torch.

She only wanted him to have something that the batteries could not run out of.

That hallway is what this is written for. Not a lesson about being brave, and not a clever way to get the light out of his hand. One small person, one ordinary room, and a parent who has already said everything she knows how to say.

There is something true about that room, and it is worth having in your mouth before the lamp clicks tomorrow night.

The room is occupied, on or off

Here is what your child is actually asking, and it was never about batteries. They are not asking you to make the room brighter. They are asking whether the room has anybody in it, which is a different question, and it has a much better answer.

Think what the torch really does. When it is on, one small circle of the room is visible. When it is off, the circle goes away. Nothing else moves. Visible and occupied are two different words, and a six year old has not learned to hold them apart yet. At half past nine, most of us have not either.

You are not the light in that room, and you were never the one holding it up. Isaiah 41:10 has God saying I am with you, I am your God, I am holding on to you, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that true in a small bedroom whether or not your voice sounded certain when you said it.

Do not be afraid, because I am with you. Do not look around in fear, because I am your God. I will make you strong, I will help you, and I am holding you up with my own right hand.Isaiah 41:10

Read that again slowly and notice what it does not say. It does not say the room will be bright. It says who is in it, and it says whose hand is doing the holding.

And you have nothing to summon tonight, because none of this was ever running on you. Scripture says His strength is made perfect in weakness, and the Spirit carries a flat, tired, ordinary sentence into a small person far better than a beautiful one carries itself.

That is the mercy of it. A parent at the end of a long day has very little left, and this does not run on what is left.

The torch is allowed

Nobody is taking the torch. Not tonight, not as a lesson, not as a small test of how far he has come.

A child who needs a light to fall asleep is a child, not a project. The torch is a kindness, and kindness is not the enemy of faith. What is worth changing is not the torch in his hand, it is the question underneath it, because a torch answers the wrong question and has to be asked again in nine minutes.

You are handing your child company, not courage. Psalm 121:3 says the One who keeps you does not let your foot slip and does not doze off, and the Holy Spirit is the one who settles that into a small chest that is still going too fast.

This is why nobody on this page will ever praise a child for not being scared. Praise the not being scared and you have quietly made it his job to manage the night, and he is six, and it is not his job. The dark is not empty, so nobody in that bed has to be brave in it. Those are two completely different rooms, and children can feel the difference long before they can explain it.

And you have permission to say one short thing instead of five good ones. His word says God is not far from any one of us, and the Spirit is the one who makes a short sentence land deeper than a long explanation ever did.

Say it once, then say it again the same way, without improving it. Repetition is how a small person learns that something is steady.

You have been given a sentence tonight that cannot run out. Scripture says the word of the Lord stands for ever, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps it standing in that bedroom long after the batteries have gone flat.