Picture Day and a Comb

Twenty minutes and a comb and a girl of nine sitting on the end of the bed in front of the mirror, because it is picture day and she asked for it to be done properly.

Her mother is good at this. She has done this hair since it was too short to do anything with. She knows where the part goes and which side never behaves and how long is too long before a nine-year-old starts complaining. There is a radio on somewhere in the house and a brother somewhere with one shoe on and a bus at ten past.

It is a good morning. That is worth saying, because of what happens next.

The girl is looking in the mirror, not at herself exactly, the way children do, half-watching the comb. And she asks a question about her own face.

I am not going to write it down. Whatever your version of it is, it is your version, and putting mine on the page would only hand you a picture you did not ask for. But you know the kind of question I mean. It is a small question. It is asked lightly. And it contains, buried in it like a stone in bread, an assumption about what a face is for and how faces get judged and where hers falls, and it is an assumption that no nine-year-old arrives at on her own.

Somebody gave her that. Or something did. And it has been given so thoroughly that she does not experience it as an opinion at all, she experiences it as a straightforward fact about the world that she is now applying to herself in a mirror at seven in the morning with a comb in her hair.

And her mother has about four seconds.

And in those four seconds she runs through what she has available, and what she has available is: a compliment, a correction, or a joke.

The compliment does not work, and she knows it does not work even as she reaches for it, because a compliment answers on the same terms the question was asked on. Saying she is lovely accepts that the mirror is the right court and simply enters a different verdict in it.

The correction does not work either, because a nine-year-old who is told not to think that way has learned only that this is a subject that upsets her mother.

The joke is what she usually does.

And you know that mirror. A child handed you a question you were not ready for, in an ordinary moment, with a comb in your hand and a bus at ten past, and you have replayed your four seconds ever since.

So take this in before we go a step further. You are the one with the standing to answer that, and you have had it since before she could speak. Psalm 127:3 says children are an heritage of the LORD, which is the language of something entrusted rather than something to be managed, and the Holy Spirit is in this bedroom with you and is not embarrassed to be here.

What He quoted at the officials

Come to the temple in the last week, where Jesus has just turned the tables over, and where children are running about shouting something, and the officials have had enough.

They come to Him and they are indignant, and what they say is essentially: do you hear what these children are saying. Which is a complaint about noise, and about propriety, and underneath both of those it is a complaint about children being treated as though their voices count for anything in a serious place.

And He answers by quoting a psalm at them.

And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?Matthew 21:16

He is quoting the eighth psalm, and the psalm's own wording is stronger than the quotation. It says: out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

Ordained strength. Established it. Founded something solid, out of the mouths of the smallest and least authoritative people in the building, and the psalm says it is done because of enemies and it silences them.

That is a startling thing to hold in your hand at seven in the morning with a comb. It says God's chosen instrument for establishing something strong and for shutting down an accusing voice is the mouth of a child.

You are raising somebody whose mouth God has already appointed for that, and it is not a metaphor. The written word says out of the mouth of babes hast thou ordained strength, and ordained is a word about establishing rather than about sweetness; and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into a bedroom on picture day with a bus at ten past.

Why the compliment is the trap

I want to be exact about the four seconds, because you will get them again this week and probably next week too.

The compliment is the natural move and it is the one that quietly loses. Not because it is untrue, and not because it is unkind. Because it answers inside the frame the question was asked in.

She has asked, in effect, where do I rank. And a compliment says: higher than you think. Which leaves the ranking standing, leaves the mirror as the court, and teaches her that the correct response to a question about her worth is a favorable rating from a person who loves her, which is a currency that will inflate away by the time she is fourteen and she will need more of it every year.

The thing that breaks the frame is not a better rating. It is a different subject.

Not: you are lovely. Something about who she is and whose she is, said as a plain fact, with no reference to the mirror at all.

You were not failing in those four seconds, and the move you reached for was the natural one. Isaiah 44:2 says fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen, and it is God renaming somebody in the middle of telling them not to be afraid; His Spirit does that naming at whatever pace He keeps, and He is not scoring your morning.

And here is the second half. You cannot keep her from the question. It is not coming from one place you could remove, and there is no filter, no rule, no arrangement of a household that keeps a nine-year-old from encountering the world's opinion of what a girl is for. Anybody who sells you a way to prevent it is selling you something.

What you can do is make sure that hers is not the only voice in the room, and that the other voice is her mother's, and that it says something the mirror is not equipped to say.

You are not being asked to build a wall around her, and nobody with any sense would ask you to. Isaiah 54:13 says all thy children shall be taught of the LORD, and great shall be the peace of thy children, and the teaching is put on Him rather than on the parent's vigilance; the same Spirit who had that written is the one who had you standing behind her with a comb when she asked.

The next four seconds

Here is the practical thing, and it is deliberately small because you have a bus at ten past.

You are going to get the question again. Not the same words. But this is not a one-off, it is a season, and it has started.

So decide now, in the daylight, when nothing is being asked, what you say. One sentence. Prepared in advance, so that it does not have to be composed in four seconds in front of a mirror while a nine-year-old watches your face.

And run it through one test: does it mention the mirror. If it does, in any direction, positive or negative, it is playing on the wrong field. If it does not, and it is about who she is and whose she is, that is the sentence.

You are able to have it ready before she asks again, and having it ready is most of the work. Scripture says out of the mouth of babes hast thou ordained strength, and what goes into that mouth in a bedroom at seven in the morning is not a small matter; the Holy Spirit is the one who put this page in front of you in a moment when nobody is asking you anything.

So picture day is not a morning you got wrong. It is twenty minutes and a comb and a girl who trusted her mother with a real question, and a woman who now has until the next time to get one sentence ready.

And a word for you rather than for them. If what sits under this is heavier than a page can carry, find a real person this week. If it has gone darker than tired, call or text 988 in the United States, at any hour.