Behold,'Tis Eventide
The choir director pauses the practice. The time for our rehearsal is nearly past and gone--next week we will sing to close the adult session of stake conference. She wants us to ponder the words we sing.
Oh, Savior, stay this night with me; behold, 'tis eventide...
She paints a picture of words for us, the pleading of a soul who must face the world again soon, but for just this moment, feels the Spirit and wants that feeling to stay.
Just a little longer. Please?
Like the Nephites, who touched His feet and His hands and listened all day to the sound of His voice; and with their tears begged him to stay.
Abide with me.
'Tis eventide, and lone will be the night if I cannot commune with thee,
Nor find in thee my light,
The darkness of the world,
I fear. . .
I think about her words. The words bring an image to my mind. A child, in the dark, wishing for a nightlight that only a loving parent can bring. Yes, I know that craving.
***
The room is dark. There are small windows, high up on the wall. In that way that houses in the late sixties were built to save energy: enough window to let light in, but not that a child could see out of. A bit of light--from a street lamp? the moon?-- slants through the windows and lands crookedly down the wall. The light catches on the corners of two pictures, black shapes of a boy's head and a girl's head, pasted on white paper and mounted in frames. The boy shape faces the girl shape. The frames are red, and the walls are lavender. The head-shapes and the light and the walls are frightening in their strangeness.
But the shapes and the garish light and the purple walls are nothing compared to sleeping on the floor. Beside the bed, with the big under-the-bed space so close and dark under the bedskirt.
And I am scared like I have never been scared before. I am six years and three months old. All is wrong. This is not my room. And I should not be here. I want to go home.
But there is nothing so certain in my heart as the knowledge that I cannot go home. And I cannot be scared. And I cannot tell anyone how very scary this room is. So I lay back down. Alone.
I do not think that I even thought to pray.
***
The director raises her hand, and I draw breath to stop the tears and sing the hymn. I realize that I hadn't thought of that night in a very long time. I'm not even sure, exactly, which night it was, though I suspect it was a Sunday night in April of 1971; a stake conference night. I know whose bedroom it was. And I know why I was there.
***
Later that evening, a precocious six-year-old child snuggles in my lap for family scripture and prayer time (yes, I know I don't have a six-year-old at my house, but on Sunday night, everyone who is in the house gets to join in if they'd like... I think there were 14 that night, including this borrowed six-year-old), and he reads boldly and clear from Abraham 4 before passing the scriptures to the next reader.
Like I would have done at that age. So mature, everyone thought. And I, keenly aware of their expectations, did not want to disappoint anyone. Besides, there was nothing so clear in that moment as the distress that every adult around me displayed in every word, motion, and deed.
But tonight, as I hold this six-year-old, I wonder.
My God, I was just a baby.
Oh, Savior, stay this night with me; behold, 'tis eventide...
She paints a picture of words for us, the pleading of a soul who must face the world again soon, but for just this moment, feels the Spirit and wants that feeling to stay.
Just a little longer. Please?
Like the Nephites, who touched His feet and His hands and listened all day to the sound of His voice; and with their tears begged him to stay.
Abide with me.
'Tis eventide, and lone will be the night if I cannot commune with thee,
Nor find in thee my light,
The darkness of the world,
I fear. . .
I think about her words. The words bring an image to my mind. A child, in the dark, wishing for a nightlight that only a loving parent can bring. Yes, I know that craving.
***
The room is dark. There are small windows, high up on the wall. In that way that houses in the late sixties were built to save energy: enough window to let light in, but not that a child could see out of. A bit of light--from a street lamp? the moon?-- slants through the windows and lands crookedly down the wall. The light catches on the corners of two pictures, black shapes of a boy's head and a girl's head, pasted on white paper and mounted in frames. The boy shape faces the girl shape. The frames are red, and the walls are lavender. The head-shapes and the light and the walls are frightening in their strangeness.
But the shapes and the garish light and the purple walls are nothing compared to sleeping on the floor. Beside the bed, with the big under-the-bed space so close and dark under the bedskirt.
And I am scared like I have never been scared before. I am six years and three months old. All is wrong. This is not my room. And I should not be here. I want to go home.
But there is nothing so certain in my heart as the knowledge that I cannot go home. And I cannot be scared. And I cannot tell anyone how very scary this room is. So I lay back down. Alone.
I do not think that I even thought to pray.
***
The director raises her hand, and I draw breath to stop the tears and sing the hymn. I realize that I hadn't thought of that night in a very long time. I'm not even sure, exactly, which night it was, though I suspect it was a Sunday night in April of 1971; a stake conference night. I know whose bedroom it was. And I know why I was there.
***
Later that evening, a precocious six-year-old child snuggles in my lap for family scripture and prayer time (yes, I know I don't have a six-year-old at my house, but on Sunday night, everyone who is in the house gets to join in if they'd like... I think there were 14 that night, including this borrowed six-year-old), and he reads boldly and clear from Abraham 4 before passing the scriptures to the next reader.
Like I would have done at that age. So mature, everyone thought. And I, keenly aware of their expectations, did not want to disappoint anyone. Besides, there was nothing so clear in that moment as the distress that every adult around me displayed in every word, motion, and deed.
But tonight, as I hold this six-year-old, I wonder.
My God, I was just a baby.
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