They Have Never Known It Working

Your youngest was two when it broke.

So she has no memory of the kitchen working. None. The version of this house that lives in her head is the only version there has ever been, and it includes the bowl and the routine and the way everybody moves around the corner.

And she likes it here. That is not in doubt. She is seven and she is happy and she has friends round and she does not know that anything is missing, because as far as her life goes, nothing is.

And that has landed on you about four times this month, and it lands differently every time.

Sometimes it is a relief. Sometimes it is the opposite, and the opposite version says: she does not know what she is missing, which is another way of saying she has been given less and does not know it.

And that second version is the one running tonight, and it is the one this article is about.

You are a mother raising children in a house they love and not a mother giving them less, and a childhood spent in a house that needs work has never once been a childhood short of anything.

Children are an heritage of the LORD

There is a line in the psalms about children, and the word it uses is a legal word about inheritance.

Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. (Psalm 127:3, King James Version)

An heritage of the LORD.

An heritage is something received. It comes from somewhere else, it is given rather than earned, and the person holding it is a holder rather than a producer.

Which means the children in that verse are not an output. They are not the result of how well a household was run, and their condition is not a report card on the people raising them.

You are holding something that was given rather than producing something that gets graded, and a child described as an heritage has never once been the score a parent was being marked on. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman at eleven at night doing arithmetic about a seven year old, and Psalm 127:3 makes them a thing received.

And the surrounding psalm is worth one sentence, because it is the whole argument.

That psalm opens by saying that except the LORD build the house, they labor in vain that build it. It is a psalm specifically about the limits of what a household's effort produces, and the children arrive in it as a gift rather than as an achievement.

You are inside a psalm that takes the weight of building off the builders, and a household doing its best in difficult conditions has never once been the thing that determined what its children got. The written word sets the limits of effort before it mentions the children, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a mother from being the whole engine.

And then: the fruit of the womb is his reward.

Reward, which is a word about a good thing given to somebody. The child is the good thing in that sentence, and the direction of the giving is toward the parent.

You have been given something rather than assigned something, and a seven year old in a house with a bowl in the corner has never once been the smaller half of what a mother received. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman hear that at eleven at night, and Psalm 127:3 makes the child the reward.

What she is actually missing

Something practical, and it is about the phrase itself.

She does not know what she is missing is a sentence that assumes a standard version of childhood exists somewhere and that this one is a subtraction from it.

There is no standard version. There are only actual childhoods, each of which contains some things and not others, and every single one of them is missing something that another one has.

The children of the house with the working kitchen are missing something too. Nobody phrases it that way about them, but it is exactly as true.

You are raising a particular childhood rather than a reduced one, and a house with a bowl in the corner has never once been a subtraction from a standard nobody has ever lived. The written word treats children as a gift held rather than a product measured, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a comparison out of a kitchen at night.

Now here is the thing to actually do, and it is a question rather than a reassurance.

Ask them what they like about this house. Tonight, at bedtime, in an ordinary voice.

And then write down what they say. Actually write it, on paper or in a phone, in their words rather than in a summary.

You have a way of finding out rather than assuming, and a question asked of a seven year old has never once produced a less accurate answer than a mother's arithmetic at eleven at night. The Holy Spirit is the one in the room while a question gets asked, and Psalm 127:3 calls a child a reward rather than a thing to be worried over.

And here is what will actually come out, because it is what always comes out. It will be the wrong things. The cupboard under the stairs. The noise the pipes make. The place on the step where the sun comes. Something about the dog.

None of it will be about a kitchen, and the list will be long, and nobody could have guessed one item on it.

You have a list coming tonight that you could not have written yourself, and a child answering a plain question has never once handed a mother back her own arithmetic. The Holy Spirit is the one in the room while the answer comes, and Psalm 127:3 calls a child an heritage received.