“If the lights are on, then that means they’re home…”

The quote that entitles this post came from a 5 year old that comes along to our weekly Secret Agents Club. It was another moment that brought me very close to tears and broke my heart for this little guy and his 8 year old brother.  They had turned up at the club the week before too and had been a bit late being picked up by someone who could have been anyone from an older brother to their mum’s new bloke. This week though it got to half an hour after the club had finished and they were still about waiting to be picked up, and they didn’t really know who it was that was supposed to be picking them up either. We tried their mum’s phone, no answer. We tried their someone Else’s phone, no answer. It was 6:00, already very dark and this 5  & 8 year old were completely prepared to walk home on their own; I’ve come to not be shocked by things like this anymore in Weston…it’s just the way things are. But what happened next really affected me.

Phil said that he’d give them a lift and I went along in the car too. They live down in one of the really big tower blocks by the shore,  and as we drove it became clear that it was highly doubtful that their mum was in because she was shopping in town; but still we thought it was worth a try. So we pulled up and they hopped out and stood ringing their buzzer for a few minutes with no answer so they came running back and said that Mummy was, as we guessed, not in.

They then told us that “James”, who i am presuming is the guy that had picked them up the week before, was round at a friend’s house and that they could be taken there. So we drove back through the estate to this guy’s house, just before we pulled up outside was when he came out with the title’s of today’s post. Nobody said anything in reply, but I think we were all silently hoping that the lights were on. They were on, and again they hopped out of the car and ran to this house, they banged on the door for a bit, and it was a real “please be in, please be in, please be in” moment. The older one then started yelling at the upstairs window at which point his brother had discovered that the front door was actually unlocked… with that they ran in and disappeared.

We don’t actually know if “James” was there or not, I’m really praying that he was and that those little guys journey home was done for that night.

That moment when they were banging on the front door was the closest I’ve come to a “You’re not safe. I want to take you home and make you safe” moment. And I really doubt that it will be the last time I have one of those moments.

It affected me as much in the way I wanted to reach out to these boys as in the way that I learnt something from them too.

It was clearly not the first time that they had been in a situation like this because they were completely unfazed by it all; and sadly we all know that it isn’t gonna be the last time either. And yet, this little 5 year old still manages to come out with something that shows he believes in them, and doesn’t doubt them at all.  Despite the fact that he was left to find his own way home and effectively forgotten, he didn’t doubt his mum loved him or would be there for him in time in any way. It never once crossed his mind that he could be alone and unloved, it was just that he hadn’t found where the person that loved him was yet. And that spoke to me so much about my relationship with My Father God.

In times when I feel like a tiny forgotten child on a cold dark night, left to find my own way home, it is so easy to get angry and God and blame him for seeming invisible and distant. But I want to be able to live, learning from Thursday’s experience, to have the faith in My Heavenly Father’s undying love to believe that he is there somewhere. To have the faith to carry on searching and seeking. The faith to know that when I find the house with the lights on, it means that he’s home and that I’m safe.

Father, I pray, give me the simple faith of  a 5 year old,

Lex xx