Bedtime Questions

The blanket was pulled up over both of our heads.

My seven year old and I stared at one another in the nearly dark in the makeshift privacy of her battered hand-me-down quilt.

“Does Satan make you do the bad things Mommy?”

This child.  Where does her miniature mind travel?

“Does he make you bad?”

Bedtime theology.

The little questions that are the big questions.

I let my forehead bump against hers.

“Oh Willow.  We choose bad.  God lets us choose.  You know how you can love Jesus but still tell a lie?”

“Yes,” she nods her golden head.

“It’s like that.  God says you can pick – you can tell the truth or you can tell a lie.  But you get to pick.  There’s a good choice.  And a bad one.”

It’s all pretty difficult – to muddle through what you think and what you believe and what you live at bedtime with a first grader who is thinking giant thoughts and asking hard questions.

But I want to be there.  To be here.  To be under an old quilt sitting cross-legged on a twin bed with my youngest little daughter.

Thinking about right and wrong.  Talking about good and bad.

Careening through it.

Head to head, heart to heart.