It starts somewhere around four. Bags on the floor. Everybody hungry and nobody able to name what they want. Somebody in a mood that arrived at school and has been carried home intact.
And you have got about ninety minutes of it before food is on the table, and every one of those minutes has three demands in it.
By half past five you can hear your own voice getting shorter. By six you are not proud of the tone. And by seven, when it has all gone quiet, you sit down and go back over it and wonder why this particular stretch beats you every single day.
The strange thing is that you know it is coming. That is the part nobody talks about. You start watching for it around two, so by the time it actually arrives you have already been braced for two hours, which means the hour is really three.
I am not going to tell you how to organize the afternoon. That is a method, and this place does not hand those out. And I am not going to tell you it will get easier, because I do not know that and neither does anybody else.
Evening and morning, and at noon
There is a line in Psalm 55 that names the hours, and it names three of them on purpose.
Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice. (Psalm 55:17, King James Version)
Evening, morning and noon. That is not a schedule of prayer, whatever it has been turned into since. It is a man saying he is going to do this at whatever hour it comes on him.
And look at the state he is in. Psalm 55 is a man being betrayed by a friend, saying he wants wings so he can fly away and be at rest. He is not a calm man having a devotional life. He is coming apart.
You are heard in the middle of the loudest hour of your day, and there has never once been a time of day outside the hearing. Psalm 55:17 says evening, and morning, and at noon, and he shall hear my voice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen at ten past four.
Cry aloud, it says. Not compose. Not settle first. The verse has room in it for a raised voice, which is the exact thing you are worried about in yourself between five and six.
You have a God who receives a loud voice, and volume has never once been the thing that disqualified anybody. It is written in Psalm 55:17 that the crying aloud is answered rather than corrected, and the Spirit of God is the one who hears a sentence said in a room full of noise.
The two hours before it
Now let me name the part that is actually costing you the most, because it is not the ninety minutes.
It is the bracing. From about two in the afternoon there is a low hum of dread running underneath whatever else is happening, and by four a great deal has already been spent on an hour that has not started.
That dread is not preparation. It does not make the hour go better and it never has. It just takes the afternoon that came before it.
Psalm 55:17 has a man naming three separate times in a day rather than one long stretch of anticipation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who cuts a day into hours a person can survive.
You are only ever asked for the hour you are in, and none of it has required you to carry the next one in advance. Psalm 55:17 names evening and morning and noon as separate things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes tomorrow's four o'clock out of today's two.
And here is a plain thing, because that hour has been telling you something about yourself for a long time and it is not true.
The way that hour goes is not a verdict on you. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about how good a parent lives in this house.
It is what happens when several tired people arrive in one room, all needing something, at the exact hour when the person meant to supply it has the least left.
You have not been failing every afternoon, and a hard hour has never once been a report on the person standing in it. The written word answers the crying aloud in Psalm 55:17 without asking why the voice was raised, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a difficult hour from a failing parent.
He shall hear my voice
There is a promise at the end of that verse and it is short and it is the whole thing.
He shall hear my voice.
Not, He shall fix the afternoon. Not, He shall make everybody in the kitchen reasonable. Just: the voice gets heard, and it gets heard from wherever it is coming from.
That is a smaller promise than the one you want and it is a much more useful one, because it is available at ten past five with three people talking at you.
Psalm 55:17 puts the hearing before any change in the circumstances, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a present thing rather than a later one.
You are heard right now, in this hour, and that hearing has never waited for the room to go quiet. Psalm 55:17 says he shall hear my voice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a sentence out of a loud kitchen without needing it repeated.
So here is what I believe is going out over somebody today.
You are not being beaten by an hour, and the way four to half past five goes has never been the measure of anything. Psalm 55:17 was written by a man who wanted wings so he could get away from his own life, and the Spirit of God is the one carrying that into a kitchen at the worst part of the afternoon.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have a voice that is heard at any hour of this day, and the loudest one in it was never an exception. It is written, evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud, and he shall hear my voice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence out of a noisy kitchen straight to God.
Evening. Morning. Noon. And ten past four.
Declare this over yourself
- Hour that starts at four every afternoon, you do not get the two hours before you. Psalm 55:17 says evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud, so by the Holy Spirit you are one hour and not three, in the name of Jesus.
- Fear that this hour proves what kind of parent I am, you are answered. The written word promises the voice is heard rather than assessed, and by the Holy Spirit I stop reading the hardest hour of my day as a report on me.
- Father, You hear the voice evening and morning and at noon. Your word says he shall hear my voice, so by Your Spirit I say one sentence out loud tomorrow when the first bag hits the floor.
Psalm 55:17
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