The Volume Turned Up

The tablet lives on the shelf by the front door and it is not supposed to come into the bedroom. Tonight it came into the bedroom.

She has it under the blanket with her, tilted so the glow does not show at the edges, playing the same episode she has seen so many times she could say it along with them. The headphones are the soft ones with the round ears, from a birthday two years ago, and they are a little small for her now.

There is a bar at the top of the screen when you press the button on the side. It fills up in small blocks. She knows exactly how many blocks it takes.

Because underneath the episode there is another sound coming up through the floor. Not words she could repeat. A sound with the words worn off it, the way a lorry comes through a wall.

So she presses the button and adds a block. Then the sound finds a gap between two lines of the episode, and she adds another block, and then one more, until the episode is far louder than an episode is supposed to be and her ears are hot, and she is not really watching any of it. She is building. Blocks of sound, stacked up into a wall, by a small person doing the only construction work available to her at that hour.

Somebody hears the floor creak and comes up. Sits on the edge of the bed. Lifts one headphone off gently and does not ask for the tablet back yet.

And has nothing to say. Because everything true is too big for the room, and everything small enough for the room is a lie.

If that is your bed and your hallway tonight, the next part is written for you.

There is a short thing to say into that room. It is not a promise about the house, and it does not require the house to be different by morning, and it is still true whether the volume goes back down or not.

She is not being naughty. She is building a wall.

Start with what the tablet actually is tonight, because the temptation at that hour is to treat it as defiance and it is not defiance.

A child who cannot change what she hears will change what she can. The volume is the one dial in the house with her hand on it. Turning it up is not rebellion and it is not weakness; it is a small person managing a big thing with the only tool she was given, and it half works, which is the worst kind of working.

You are not looking at bad behavior tonight. Psalm 46:1 says God is a help who is right there when trouble comes, and the Holy Spirit is in that bedroom already rather than waiting on the landing for the house to improve.

God is our safe place and our strength, a help who is always right there when trouble comes.Psalm 46:1

Right there. Not once things settle. Not on the good evenings. That verse was written about trouble, from inside it, because a God who was only available in a calm house would be no use to anybody in this one.

So the wall she is building has somebody standing inside it with her. That is a different thing from the wall holding.

You have not damaged this child by having a hard evening. Scripture says His mercies are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit is already standing in tomorrow morning with both of you.

Now the sentence that is not optional, and it is best said in the same calm voice as everything else, tonight and again on an ordinary day when nothing is happening.

If anything at home ever hurts a child or frightens them, telling a grown-up they trust is the right thing to do. A teacher. An auntie. A neighbor. A doctor. Anyone safe. No child is expected to work out first whether it counts as bad enough, because deciding that was never a child's job and never will be. Telling is right, telling is allowed, and nobody is ever in trouble for telling.

What she is not carrying, whatever she thinks

She almost certainly has a plan. Children in loud houses nearly always do. Get up early, be good, be helpful, be so easy that there is nothing left to be loud about.

The plan does not need praising and it does not need correcting. It needs quietly taking off her, because the job it was written for was never hers. Whatever is happening in that house belongs to the adults in it. It is not hers to mend, to referee, to soften, to carry a message about, or to be so good that it stops.

You are carrying more than one person is built to carry, and He knows its exact weight. The written word says He keeps count of every turning over in the night and keeps every tear, and the Holy Spirit does not need one word of it explained to Him first.

And she is allowed to be little. Not brave. Little. Little is not a failure of nerve, it is the correct size for a six year old, and being little in a house that God is holding is one of the safest positions there is.

You were given authority over the fear in that room, and not over the volume in the house. His word says the peace of God guards hearts and minds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who posts that guard over a bed tonight.