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# The house will be full
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/the-house-will-be-full/
- Published: 2026-10-30T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-30T09:59:59.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional

*"I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety." — Psalm 4:8*

Short prayer this morning. The list, the minute, done.

Dan and Beth are coming tomorrow afternoon. I made up the guest room this morning — fresh sheets, the quilt that was my mother's, the lamp that does not always work on the first try, a glass of water on the nightstand because Beth drinks water in the night and I have learned this about her over twenty years and she does not know I know it.

I am not nervous about Sunday. I have done All Saints before. I have stood in the sanctuary and heard the names read and said amen after each one and I have done it for years and I will do it again and it does not get easier and it does not get harder. It gets different. The weight is the same. The muscles that carry it are stronger.

The psalmist says lie down and sleep in peace, and I am going to do that tonight, and tomorrow night Dan and Beth will be in the guest room and I will lie down knowing my son is in the house, which is a different kind of peace — the kind you do not realize you miss until it is back.

The children are coming tomorrow too, I think. Dan did not say so, but Dan does not travel without Jack and Olivia, and Jack is twelve and Olivia is nine and they will fill this house with a noise I have not heard since August, and Biscuit will follow them from room to room the way he follows everyone who is not me, and by tomorrow evening the house will smell like whatever Beth decided to bring and whatever I decided to cook and the house will be full, and being full is its own prayer.

*Lord, the house will be full tomorrow. That is the prayer tonight.*