I Still Wait Up

Half past eleven and you are still in the front room with something on that you are not watching.

There is no reason for it. They are somewhere safe with people you know and they have never once given you cause, and if somebody asked you what you were waiting for you would not have a sentence for them.

You are not going to say anything when they come in. You will say something about the light or about the door and then go up.

They know you are doing it. They have known for about a year, and they have never once mentioned it, and you have never once been sure whether they mind.

I am not going to tell you at what age this stops. That is a readiness marker and this site does not hand those out. And I am not going to tell you to trust them more, because you do trust them, and that has never been what this is.

I laid me down and slept

There is a line in Psalm 3 that says something ordinary and it is written by a man in the worst night of his life.

I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me. (Psalm 3:5, King James Version)

I laid me down and slept.

David is writing that while running from his own son, out of his own city, with an army behind him. Psalm 3 has a heading that says so plainly.

And what he reports is that he went to sleep. Not that he kept watch. Not that he stayed up. He lay down, in the middle of it, and slept, and the reason given is not that things were safe.

You are able to sleep in the middle of something unresolved, and no verse anywhere has ever once required a person to keep watch. Psalm 3:5 says I laid me down and slept, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a front room at half past eleven.

And then the reason. For the LORD sustained me.

The sustaining happened while he was asleep. It is reported afterwards, in the past tense, by somebody who was not present for it, because he was unconscious the entire time.

You have a sustaining that runs while you are asleep, and it has never once needed you awake to observe it. It is written in Psalm 3:5 that he awaked because the LORD sustained him, and the Spirit of God is the one who works through a night nobody is watching.

What the waiting up is actually for

Now let me name what is happening at half past eleven, because it is not surveillance and it is not worry exactly.

It is a post. A position held, for no operational reason, because holding it is the only remaining form of a thing you used to do constantly and no longer have a use for.

For years, being awake when they were not was most of the job. Every night, for a decade, without a thought. And the job has changed and the posture has not, and there is nowhere obvious to put it.

You are holding a shape that no longer has a job attached to it, and that has never once been a failure to move on. It is written in Psalm 3:5 that the sustaining happened while a man slept, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a posture off somebody still standing in it out of loyalty.

That is not anxiety. It is a habit of love with nothing left to do, standing at half past eleven in a front room with the television on.

Psalm 3:5 has the sustaining continuing while a person sleeps, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a post off somebody who has been holding it out of loyalty rather than out of need.

You are holding a post out of loyalty rather than necessity, and it has never once been anxiety. Psalm 3:5 keeps the sustaining running through the sleeping, and the Holy Spirit is the one who relieves a person of a watch nobody assigned.

And here is the plain thing, because a year of this has become something.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence that you cannot let go or that you do not trust anybody.

It is a decade of a real duty ending without a ceremony, which is how nearly all of them end.

You have not failed to let go of anything, and a habit outlasting its purpose has never once been a report on a person. The written word has a man sleeping through a genuine crisis in Psalm 3:5, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to read a light left on as a lack of trust.

They have known for a year

One more thing, about the fact that they know, because it matters and it is not what you fear.

A person coming in at half past eleven and finding a light on in a front room is not being checked. They are being met, and there is a large difference, and almost everybody who has ever come home to that has known which one it was.

That is not permission to keep doing it forever. It is a correction to the story you have been telling yourself about what they think.

Psalm 3:5 has somebody being sustained without being watched, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a door at half past eleven whether or not anybody is in the front room.

You are meeting somebody rather than checking them, and a light left on has never once been read as surveillance by anybody coming home to it. Psalm 3:5 has the sustaining done without a watcher, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at the door either way.