What a long hard day it’s been
You’ve had to take the rough with the smooth,
Those eyes are tired from what they’ve seen,
It’s not so easy standing up for truth.
I’m very grateful for Angels. Angels you can’t see, who tap you on your shoulder. Angels fierce on horseback with flaming swords. Angels like pillars of light at the edge of your garden. Angels with shopping trolleys they pull behind them.
I bumped into the one with a shopping trolley yesterday. Literally. I was navigating the grime on the subway floor under the dual carriageway, determining not to splash flecks of whatever-lies-beneath on my trousers. Tiptoeing through, and mostly looking down, his cheery “hello!” alerted me to his proximity. He peered at me through thick glasses, and held up a glass bottle in his gloved hands, waving it in front of me, and indicating what he was doing down there. With his gloves and trolley.
“It’s for my dog, see”, he said. “I walk my dog this way, everyday. I don’t want him to cut his paws on the glass. So I come down here and take all the bottles away before they smash. For his paws, see.”
And he waved the bottle again, reiterating: “Before.They. Smash”, with full punctuation and pause.
His joy was infectious and we laughed together before moving on in opposite directions. The grime lost my attention. I was caught for a moment in his joy and the redemption of the subway as safe-place for his dog. And I remembered the song.
Once-upon-a-late-‘80s-time I remember filing my way into a row of seats at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham. I was there with my family at a praise party led by the Rev. Ian Smale, or Ishmael. A bouncing joy-filled punk-rock Jesus man and celebration. And an introduction to a song that was and has remained a tutor. The chorus went:
Forget the wars you’ve been in today,
Nothing can disturb you now,
Around your bed are stationed heaven’s armies.
So lay down weary child lay down,
Little Angel go to sleep.
Father’s here and He will keep you safe.
Thanks to the reliance of the Rev Smale on 3 chords, my brother and I could bang it out on the piano in no time. I could warble it to my baby sister at bed-time. And I could whisper it quietly to myself at sleep time.
And thanks to the Rev Smale, and his heart to communicate the mysteries of the 3 to the smallest among us, a golden thread wove its way into my childhood love of God:
What a long hard day its been…
He sees.
He sees me.
When my babies were born, and when I was still under the misguided impression that I could curate a bed-time routine and that sleep would naturally follow, I sang the song to them.
Those were the days of tiny heads and tiny fingers curled around yours. Soft curls and long eyelashes (fighting) resting on squidgy cheeks. The beauty and the exhaustion: Lay down weary child lay down (pleeeease…) little Angel GO TO SLEEP !….
And then. Then came the child with the greatest concentration of the family wiring. You know what I mean. The one where a song sung once became the song sung forever, and it wasn’t bedtime unless the song was sung. This one was The One who didn’t actually sleep at all, even when the song-that-had-to-be-sung had been sung. So. I attempted, repeatedly, to make the song shorter. By 3 verses. Eliminating all this:
1.
What a long hard day it’s been
You’ve had to take the rough with the smooth,
Those eyes are tired from what they’ve seen,
It’s not so easy standing up for truth.
2.
What a long hard day it’s been
At times you wondered if you’d make it through
The straight and narrow’s tough and mean
As the pressure really gets to you
3.
What a long hard day it’s been
To take his cross will mean you’ll suffer pain
Though you’re weak He’ll keep you clean
Rest in Him and be renewed again .
One verse at a time. Leaving only the chorus :
Chorus
But forget the wars you’ve been in today,
Nothing can disturb you now.
Around your bed are stationed heaven’s armies.
So lay down weary child lay down
Little Angel go to sleep,
Father’s here and He will keep you safe,
Father’s here and He will keep you safe.
If you’ve ever done bedtime, you’ll know the futility of this endeavour.
If not with a song, then by trying to sneaky skip 3 pages from the book you’ve read a thousand times, only to see the chubby finger stubbornly pop up, and direct you backwards to correct your error.
Try as I might, there was no way I could skip those verses. No way.
I was thinking about those days and those verse when I left the subway yesterday. Thinking about the song and the parts you can’t skip.
Thinking about the times I know that Angels (the fiery ones and the trolley-wielding ones) had gone ahead of me and cleared the glass bottles from my path before they smashed and cut my feet.
And thinking about the times they didn’t.
And thinking about the times as a mum of children and dogs that I didn’t and I couldn’t.
And the times that the Angels around the bed just stood there.
Father’s here and He will keep you safe.
But I can’t skip the verses, as the chubby finger will always stubbornly point out. No matter how exhausted I am.
The beauty of the verses is that they remind me that pain is part of the song: weakness; the pressure that gets to me; weariness; the cross that calls; the pain that is guaranteed. They all belong.
If I skip past them I might just skip past the Father in the middle of it all who sees. The chorus might become, for me, a spell that tries to hide the pain, rather than His kiss in the middle of the pain.
The Father rescues me in the pain. Not from the pain: cleaning; renewing; watching; knowing; singing over me in the middle of it all. Singing over those I love in the middle of their all.
At the close of the day.
Through the watches of the night.
Father’s here.
I’m alive through the no-sleep years, and the years where no-sleep was really the least of my worries. I’m alive and still singing all 3 verses, badly, and trying to hold onto the song and the slightly bonkers punk rock attitude the Rev Smale gave me.
I’ve learnt a little better how to keep dialling past the static until I can hear the Father singing over me again. Whilst also knowing more deeply that there really are Angels (fiery and trolley-wielding) that are sent to move the odd glass bottle from my path. Before it smashes and my feet are cut.
He really has kept me safe. The Father-who-is-here. The One who sees.
(And the Rev Ian Smale- with gratitude)
“What a long hard day it’s been (Angels) Key A”, Ishmael’s Songs
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