It Is Easier When They Are Out

The door goes and something in the house changes.

Not the noise level, though sometimes that. Something in the air. The room gets about ten percent bigger and your shoulders come down without asking permission, and you notice it happening and you notice yourself noticing.

And then the second thing arrives, about four seconds later, which is the shame.

Because that was relief. You felt relief that one of your own children left the building, and there is no way to dress that up into something acceptable, and you have never said it to a single person.

I am not going to tell you why they are hard work. I have not met them, and speculating about a child I have never seen would be the worst thing I could do on a page like this one.

And I am not going to tell you the relief means nothing. It clearly means something to you, or you would not still be thinking about it two hours later.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit

There is a question in Psalm 139 that David asks about himself, and it turns out to be the most useful thing available for a parent thinking about a child.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? (Psalm 139:7, King James Version)

The answer is nowhere, and the whole passage after it spells out the nowhere in detail. Heaven, the grave, the wings of the morning, the far side of the sea.

There is no location in that list where the presence thins out. Not one of them is described as further away than the others.

You have a child who is inside God's presence wherever they have gone, and there has never once been a place where that thins out. Psalm 139:7 asks whither shall I flee from thy presence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen ten seconds after a front door closes.

And the same verse works in the other direction, which is where it starts touching the shame.

If there is nowhere a person can go from that Spirit, then there is also nowhere your own feeling can go where it is not already seen. The relief you felt was not hidden from God for four seconds and then confessed. It was known while it was happening.

You are not confessing something God has just found out about, and the four seconds were never once a secret. It is written in Psalm 139:7 that there is nowhere to flee from His presence, and the Spirit of God is the one who was already there when the door closed.

Relief is a body, not a heart

Now let me separate two things, because they have been fused for a long time and the fusing is where the damage is.

Relief is a physical event. Shoulders, breathing, the muscles at the back of the neck. It is a body reporting on load, and it reports honestly and fast and without consulting anybody about what it means.

Love is not measured by that report. If it were, every nurse would be judged on how they feel at the end of a shift, and every one of them would fail.

You are not measured by what your body says at the end of a hard stretch, and no verse anywhere has ever once made that the test. It is written in Psalm 139:7 that the presence fills every place, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in a nervous system without being confused by it.

Your body registered that a demand had left the room. That is all it registered. It made no statement whatsoever about whether you love the person who was making the demand.

Psalm 139:7 has God present in the whole of a person including the parts that report on load, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a nervous system accurately.

You are not being judged by your own nervous system, and a body reporting on load has never once been a statement about love. Psalm 139:7 has the presence filling every part of a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a shoulder dropping for exactly what it is.

And here is the plain thing, because two hours of this has become a verdict.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence that you love that child less than the others.

It is a tired person whose load changed, and the noticing of it is a sign of conscience rather than of coldness.

You have not been exposed as loving one child less, and a moment of relief has never once been the measure of what is between you. The written word fills every place with His presence in Psalm 139:7, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to read a body as a heart.

The house being easier is a fact about the house

One more thing, and it is not comfortable but it is true and it takes weight off.

Some children are harder work. That is a real property of real children and it is not a criticism of them and it is not caused by parenting.

The house being easier when one particular person is out is a description of load distribution, and it is true in almost every household with more than one child in it, and almost nobody says so out loud.

You are describing a load rather than confessing a coldness, and it has never once been a secret about your heart. It is written in Psalm 139:7 that nothing is hidden anywhere from God, and the Spirit of God is the one who already knew the shape of this house before anybody said it.

Saying it does not make it worse. Not saying it is what makes it grow, because an unspoken thing gets rehearsed, and rehearsing turns a fact into an accusation.

Psalm 139:7 leaves no room in which a thing is unknown, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person say a true sentence that was already fully known.

You are able to say the true sentence, and it has never once been news to the God who was in the room when it happened. Psalm 139:7 rules out any place where a thing could be hidden, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives an honest sentence without flinching.