I Dread What They Will Notice

Your own feelings about this day are not the problem.

You have made your peace with those, more or less, the way people do. You know which bits are hard. You have a private arrangement with the difficult hour and you get through it and you always have.

What you cannot get through, this year, is the thought of a child looking up at some point in the afternoon and taking something in.

It might be the thing that is missing. It might be a person who is not there, or a person who is there and is not the same. It might be a room that is quieter than it was, or an amount of money that is not the amount there was last time, or the look that goes between two adults across a table at the exact moment a nine year old happens to glance up.

You cannot control any of that and you have been trying to since about the middle of September.

And I want to name something you have probably not said out loud, because it sounds ugly and it is not ugly at all. Some part of you would find this day easier if the children were not going to be in it. Not because you do not want them. Because being watched by somebody you love while you get through something hard is a different job from getting through it.

That is not a bad thought. That is the thought of a mother doing two jobs at once and knowing it.

He it is that doth go before thee

There is a line Moses says to a whole generation of people who were about to walk into something none of them had done before.

And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed. (Deuteronomy 31:8, King James Version)

Look at the first clause and how strange it is. He goes before. Not alongside, in that first phrase. Before.

Somebody is already in the day your children are about to walk into. He is already in the afternoon. He is already in the room at the moment the nine year old looks up, and He got there before you did and before they did.

I am not going to build a promise out of that about how the day goes, because Moses is not promising a comfortable arrival either. He is saying something narrower and better: whatever is in there, it is not unattended, and nobody is walking into an empty room.

You are not the first one into that afternoon, and the written word says plainly that the LORD goes before rather than merely turning up afterward. Deuteronomy 31:8 puts Him in the day ahead of the people who have to live it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that something you can put weight on rather than a verse you have heard.

That is under your children today. Under you as well, but I want you to have it about them first, because that is where the fear is.

You have children who are already accompanied into a day you cannot control, and it is written into Deuteronomy 31:8 that He does not fail and does not forsake. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a mother steady inside a thing she cannot arrange.

What children actually notice

Now let me say something that will sound like a small correction and is meant as a relief.

Children are extremely good at noticing and extremely bad at interpreting. Those two facts travel together and the second one is the one that helps you.

A child will absolutely register that something is different. They register everything. What they do not do is arrive at your interpretation of it. They do not think: money is tight and my mother is ashamed. They think: it was different this year. They hold it as a fact about the day, not as a verdict about you, unless somebody hands them a verdict to hold.

You were never going to keep them from noticing, and Scripture does not have one story in it where God protects people by keeping them uninformed. Deuteronomy 31:8 tells a generation plainly what is ahead of them and then names who is in it with them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the pressure off a woman trying to manage what a child perceives.

Here is where the real risk sits, and it is not where you think. The risk is not that they notice. The risk is that they notice, and nobody says anything, and they fill the silence themselves. A child with an unexplained difference in the room will build an explanation, and the one they build is almost always worse than the true one, and very often it has them in it as the cause.

That is the thing worth spending your energy on. Not the hiding. The one sentence.

You have something better than concealment available to you, and the written word puts a leader telling people the truth about what is coming and then telling them who goes before them in it. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a mother a plain sentence at the moment a child looks up.

One sentence, decided in October

So here is the whole assignment, and it is smaller than the months this has already cost.

Decide now, in advance, one plain sentence you would say if a child asks. Not a speech. Not an explanation of the adult situation. One sentence, at a child's height, true.

Something on the order of: this year is different and it is not because of anything you did. Or: I am a bit sad today and it is nothing to do with you, and I am alright. Or: she is not here and we all feel it, and it is allowed to feel like that.

The two things it has to contain are that the difference is real and that they did not cause it. Everything else is optional.

You are able to hand a child the true small version instead of a silence, and Deuteronomy 31:8 has God saying fear not to people He has just told the truth to. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present at the moment a mother says nine or ten honest words to somebody four feet tall.

And I want you to notice what deciding it in October does. On the day, you will be tired and managing eleven things and somebody will ask you at the worst possible moment. A sentence you have already decided arrives on its own. A sentence you have not decided gets replaced with a bright deflection that a child can hear the wrongness of instantly.

You were made able to tell a child a hard true thing gently, and Scripture is full of God telling His people what is ahead rather than distracting them from it. Deuteronomy 31:8 says neither be dismayed after it has named the thing, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a voice that wants to go bright and hide.