My Daughter Asked When It Would Be Done

She asked it the way children ask things, which is straight.

No wind up, no tone, no meaning underneath it. She was eating and she looked up and she said when is the little room going to be finished.

And the room went quiet in a way that a nine year old did not notice and that you have not stopped noticing since.

What came out of your mouth was soon. Or one of its cousins. Soon, we will get to it, maybe over the summer, we will see. Something that filled the space and closed the subject and was not exactly a lie and was not in any way true.

Then she went back to eating, because to her it was a question about a room and it was answered.

And you sat there with something stuck in your chest, and it was not about the room at all, and you could not have named it at the time.

Here is what it was. She asked a plain question and did not get a plain answer, and some part of you knows exactly how many of those add up before a child stops asking.

You are a mother who can say a true thing about an unfinished room, and a plain answer has never once been the same as a promise.

Let your communication be yea, yea

Jesus is teaching about oaths, and about the elaborate machinery people build to make their words mean something.

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. (Matthew 5:37, King James Version)

Yea, yea. Nay, nay.

The instruction is astonishingly small. Say yes when it is yes. Say no when it is no. And then, notably, stop talking, because everything past those two words is where the trouble lives.

That is not a rule about honesty in the large sense. Nobody in that crowd was being told not to commit perjury. It is a rule about the padding. The soon. The we will see. The things a decent person says to keep a moment soft.

You have permission from this text to be extremely brief, and a short answer to a child has never once been a cold one. Matthew 5:37 puts the whole instruction inside four words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain sentence a kindness rather than a rebuke.

And look at what the padding is actually for. It is not for the child. It is for the adult, and it is for right now, and its job is to get through the next four seconds without anybody being uncomfortable.

Which works. The four seconds pass. And the cost of it does not land in the kitchen, it lands somewhere out past a hundred of these, when a child quietly files the room under things Mom does not answer.

You were never once trying to deceive that girl, and a soft word said to protect a moment is not the same animal as a lie. The Spirit of God is the one who can tell an evasion from a kindness gone slightly wrong, and Matthew 5:37 goes after the padding and never after the person.

The answer she was actually asking for

Here is the thing worth knowing, and it takes the pressure off completely.

She was not asking for a date. A nine year old asking when something will be finished is not building a schedule. She is asking whether the room is a live thing or a dead thing, because it sits in her house and she cannot tell which it is, and not being able to tell is the uncomfortable part.

Yes it is still happening, and I do not know when, is a complete answer to her actual question.

You have an answer available tonight that you already know, and it was never once necessary to have a date before you could speak. Matthew 5:37 asks for yea and nay and asks for nothing after them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a mother giving a short answer at a table.

And there is a second thing in it, and this one is the reason it matters.

A child who gets a plain answer about a small thing learns that plain answers are available in this house. That lesson does not get taught about the big things. It gets taught about a half painted room, and a broken gate, and whether there is any more of the good cereal.

You are teaching something about whether questions get answered here, and a half finished room has never once been too small a place to teach it. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a kitchen while an ordinary sentence gets said, and Matthew 5:37 sets the standard on ordinary communication rather than on solemn occasions.

And the reverse is what you already felt in your chest. Not guilt about the room. Something closer to an alarm about the pattern, arriving early, which is a mercy and not an accusation.

You were given that discomfort early enough to do something about it, and an alarm that arrives after one question is not a verdict about a hundred. Matthew 5:37 is a rule about the words themselves, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a mother feel the thing without reading it as a charge.

Say it tonight, and say less than you want to

So here is the assignment, and the hardest part of it is the brevity.

Go and find her tonight and say one true sentence about that room.

Something like: I do not know when the little room will be done, and it is still going to happen, and I should have said that this morning.

That is it. Three clauses. Then stop.

You have everything you need for that sentence already, and you were never waiting on information before you could say it. The Holy Spirit is the one standing in a doorway at bedtime while a short sentence gets said, and Matthew 5:37 asks for nothing beyond the yes and the no.

Do not attach a plan. Do not attach a weekend. Do not say and maybe you can help me with it, which is lovely and is also a way of adding padding on the other end.

She will say okay and carry on with whatever she is doing, and that will feel like nothing happened, and something will have happened.