The Child We Are Bringing Home

He is six, and in about five weeks he will be sleeping in the room at the end of the hall.

You have painted it. You have got the bed in and the curtains up and the lamp that his caseworker said he liked the look of. Everything that can be got ready has been got ready, and you have been checking the room at odd hours for no reason you could defend.

And about a month ago you started learning some words in the language he has been spoken to in.

Not many. You are not fluent and you will not be by the time he arrives, and you know both of those things and it has not stopped you.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are preparing for somebody who did not ask for any of this, and there is nothing you can do about that, and the room and the lamp and the words are all the same attempt.

So I am not going to tell you that love is the language that matters. That sentence is true and it is the sort of thing people say to somebody who has asked a specific question, and it will not tell you what to do in the hallway on the first evening.

God setteth the solitary in families

There is a line in Psalm sixty eight that is short and does a great deal.

God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains. (Psalm 68:6, King James Version)

God setteth the solitary in families.

Now stay on the verb, because it is not a gentle one. Setteth is a placing word. It is deliberate and it is done by somebody with authority, and it is not a description of a thing that drifts into happening.

Somebody does this on purpose. That is what the verse says, and it says it about the solitary rather than about the family.

You have a placing happening in your house that is being done on purpose by somebody, and a child arriving has never once been a thing that merely worked out. Psalm 68:6 makes the setting deliberate and gives it a subject, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a painted room at the end of a hall.

Now notice who the verse is about, because it is easy to read it the other way round.

The solitary. Not the family. The sentence is oriented entirely toward the one being placed, and the household is the setting rather than the subject, and everything in that line is concerned with the person who has been alone.

That is a useful correction for five weeks of getting a room ready, because it puts the whole thing back where it belongs.

You have been preparing a setting for somebody the whole sentence is actually about, and a household has never once been the subject of that verse. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the placing deliberately, and Psalm 68:6 orients the entire line toward the one who has been solitary.

And here is the third thing, which is the second half of the verse.

He bringeth out those which are bound with chains. It sits in the same sentence, which means the psalm puts the two together: the placing of the lonely and the bringing out of the bound are one piece of work rather than two.

A child coming into a house is not only arriving somewhere. He is being brought out of something.

You are receiving somebody who is being brought out of something rather than only being brought into something, and an arrival has never once been the whole of what is happening. Psalm 68:6 puts the placing and the bringing out in one line, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been doing both in a six year old for longer than you have known his name.

The words are for the hallway

Here is the practical half, and it is about the first evening.

Think about what the first hour in that house is actually going to be. He will come through a door into a place that smells wrong.

Everything will be unfamiliar. The light switches, the sounds the house makes, the food, the faces, the sheets. Every single input will be new at once, which is a great deal for a six year old and there is no way to reduce it.

Except one. If somebody says something to him in the sounds he already has, there is one familiar thing in the room.

You have a way to put one familiar thing into a room where everything else is new, and a known sound has never once been a small object to a frightened child. The Spirit of God is the one who does the placing on purpose, and Psalm 68:6 orients the whole sentence toward the one being set.

Now here is what to actually learn, and it is smaller and more specific than a vocabulary.

Not greetings. Not the things a textbook puts first. Learn the four things that get said to a six year old at bedtime and at the table.

Are you hungry. Do you need the bathroom. Goodnight. I am here.

Those four are what a child hears from an adult in an ordinary evening, and hearing any of them in the sounds he knows will do more in that hallway than a hundred words of anything else.

You have the right four rather than the first four, and a sentence a child hears at bedtime has never once been the same object as a greeting out of a book. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows what a six year old listens for in a strange house, and Psalm 68:6 orients the whole line toward the one being set down.

And here is the thing about doing it badly, said plainly, because you are going to do it badly.

Your accent will be wrong. He will notice, because children notice everything, and he will possibly find it funny, and that is not a problem. It is close to the best available outcome.

You have four sentences to learn rather than a language, and the right four words have never once needed a fifth hundred behind them. Psalm 68:6 puts the placing and the unbinding in one breath, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a hallway on a first evening with a man and a child.

A six year old laughing at a grown man's pronunciation on his first night in a strange house is a six year old who has just found something in that house he is better at than the adults. There is very little you could hand him that would be worth more in that hour.

You have something to give him that is better for being said badly, and a child laughing at a grown man has never once been a bad first hour. The Spirit of God is the one in the room when a boy hears his own sounds coming out wrong, and the written word sets the solitary in families on purpose.

Four sentences, and the rest in English

So here is the assignment, and it is aimed at an evening five weeks away.

Say one prepared sentence to that person, and let the rest of it be in English.

Learn the four. Are you hungry. Do you need the bathroom. Goodnight. I am here. Say each one out loud until it comes without being assembled.

And then let everything else in that house be in English, from the first evening onward, without any apology.

You have four sentences to have ready and a whole house that can be in English, and a mixed house has never once been a lesser home than a fluent one. Psalm 68:6 does the setting deliberately and never once asks the household to be anything first, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man practicing four sentences in a painted room.

And here is the one to have ready for the hallway, because there will be a moment and it will be short.

I am here. That one. Learn it best of the four, and say it in the hallway in the first ten minutes, badly, and then carry his bag upstairs and talk about the lamp in English.

Because the words are not there to hold a conversation. They are there so that on the worst evening of a six year old's year, one sound in that house is a sound he already owns. Then stop, because four sentences is the assignment and the rest of it is allowed to be in English forever.

You have one sentence for a hallway and permission to do the rest in English, and a sound a child already owns has never once been a small thing on a hard evening. The Spirit of God is the one in that hallway before anybody arrives, and Psalm 68:6 brings somebody out of something in the same breath as it sets him down.