Before Sarah Had Words for It

This post includes reflections on a child’s dream and themes of spiritual discernment.

There are moments that don’t make sense when they happen.
They only make sense later — once you’ve survived long enough to look back.

This was one of those moments in Sarah’s story.

They had been staying with Robert briefly after a COVID exposure. A precaution. A disruption. Nothing dramatic. Life felt suspended in that strange in-between space the early pandemic created — cautious, uncertain, watchful.

That morning, Sarah’s son woke before she did. He was three.

He didn’t come to her frightened.
He didn’t cry.
He didn’t ask questions.

He climbed onto the bed beside her and spoke calmly, the way children do when they’re simply reporting something that feels true to them.

“There was a beast scratching at his back from between the sheets,” he said.
“And I saved him.”

That was all.

No fear.
No urgency.
No emotion attached to it at all.

Just a statement — finished and complete.

Sarah waited for more. For a punchline. For signs of distress. But there were none. Her son slid off the bed and went on with his day, as if he had just told her what he dreamed about trucks or dinosaurs.

She did what many adults do when a child says something that doesn’t fit neatly into reason or comfort. She noticed it. And then she set it aside.

Not because she didn’t care — but because she didn’t yet have language for it.

A Child’s Dream Sarah Couldn’t Explain Yet

Sarah didn’t rush to interpret the dream. She didn’t correct him. She didn’t spiritualize it or dismiss it.

She simply remembered how he said it.

He hadn’t accused Robert.
He hadn’t dramatized the image.
He hadn’t asked for reassurance.

He had spoken as if he were describing something factual — and then moved on.

At the time, it felt easier to store the moment away than to try to name it. There were no categories for it yet. No framework. No urgency.

Just a quiet image that lingered.

What Psychology Says About Children and Discernment

Developmental psychology tells us that very young children don’t typically invent symbolic moral narratives. They don’t usually place themselves in the role of protector, nor do they describe threats directed at others — especially without fear.

But psychology also tells us something else.

Children are remarkably sensitive to emotional and relational environments. Long before they can articulate danger, they sense it. They absorb tension. They register imbalance. And because they don’t yet have adult logic or social filters, they express what they sense through imagery.

They speak in pictures.

Not because they understand more — but because they censor less.

Sarah’s son didn’t diagnose anything. He didn’t accuse anyone. He didn’t explain the dream or try to make meaning out of it.

He simply described an image and his place in it.

A beast.
A back.
And the certainty that something needed to stop.

What Scripture Says About Early Knowing

Scripture has always made room for this kind of knowing.

Not the kind that shouts.
Not the kind that performs.
But the kind that surfaces quietly, before understanding arrives.

The Bible suggests that wisdom sometimes comes before explanation. That truth can precede interpretation. That discernment can arrive gently — especially through those who have not yet learned to ignore it.

This doesn’t make children prophets.
It makes them perceptive.

Sarah didn’t rebuke anything unseen. She didn’t assign meaning where none had yet formed. She didn’t turn the moment into a warning or a sign.

She simply held it — without knowing why.

Years later — when confusion deepened, when Scripture began to feel less like refuge and more like pressure, when her own body would begin responding to what her mind had tried to reason through — that memory returned.

Not as proof.
Not as prophecy.
But as context.

The dream hadn’t been dramatic.

It had been early.

And sometimes discernment arrives that way — quietly, without explanation — waiting for the day we are ready to understand it.

“Out of the mouths of children and infants you have established strength.”
— Psalm 8:2

At the time, Sarah didn’t know what her son had seen or why it stayed with her.
She only knew how he said it.

Years later, she would learn what happens when discernment is slowly rewritten — not through dreams, but through accusation — and how easily the name of God can be used to turn caution into guilt.

That story came next.

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