My eight-year-old asked me a question I wasn’t prepared for.
“What does amen mean?”
Not in a big, dramatic, existential way. Not during a deep conversation about faith or life. We were just… there. Mid-day. Mid-noise. Mid-everything.
He had heard it somewhere — probably at the end of a prayer, or in a song, or from one of those moments kids collect words the way they collect shiny stones. And he wanted to know what this one meant.
I opened my mouth with confidence. And then realized I didn’t actually know how to explain it. Not in a way that would make sense to an eight-year-old. Not without turning it into something heavier than it needed to be.
I know what amen does. It ends things. It closes the loop. It’s the period at the end of a sentence people hope the universe is listening to.
But what does it mean?
So I stalled. Like all respectable adults do when cornered by a child’s very reasonable question. “Well,” I said, buying myself time, “it kind of means… ‘so be it.’ Or ‘let it be true.’ Or… ‘I agree with this.’” He looked at me the way kids do when they’re deciding whether your answer is real or just adult noise. “So,” he said slowly, “it’s like saying… ‘I hope this happens’?”
That… was better than my answer.
We sat with that for a bit. And then he asked, “Why do people always say it at the end?” Because we like closure, I thought. Because we’re uncomfortable leaving things open-ended. Because we want to believe there’s a button you can press after saying something important, and the button says: Done. Sent. Please confirm receipt.
But what I said was, “Maybe because it’s like saying, ‘Okay, I’m finished asking now.’”
He nodded, satisfied. As if this made complete sense. As if he hadn’t just quietly reframed something I’d heard my whole life.
The rest of the day, the word stayed with me. Not in a religious way. In a very human one. We say amen at the end of hopes. At the end of wishes dressed up as sentences. At the end of things we don’t actually control.
It’s a tiny word that carries a lot of wanting.
And maybe that’s what it really is. Not a magic word. Not a guarantee. Just a way of saying: I’ve said my part. Now I’m letting go.
Later that evening, my son was negotiating something entirely unrelated — screen time, probably — and he finished his argument with a dramatic little nod and said, “Okay. Amen.”
I laughed. He had already turned it into punctuation.
What I liked most about his question wasn’t that it was deep. It was that it was simple. He wasn’t trying to understand belief systems. He was trying to understand how a word works.
And in doing that, he reminded me how many words we use on autopilot. How many endings we accept without examining what they’re really doing for us.
Maybe amen doesn’t mean one thing.
Maybe it means: I’m done speaking now.
Maybe it means: I hope this holds.
Maybe it means: I don’t have anything else to add, but I care about what I just said.
Or maybe it just means what my eight-year-old heard in it:
“I hope this happens.” And honestly, that might be enough.
~ Ashmita, still navigating life’s adventures, and appreciating the beautifully messy algorith of human connection
#Parenting #UnscriptedConnections #Curiosity #EverydayMoments #DaryenTeaches #AshmitaWrites #Family
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox.
Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice.
Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there!
***
–
Photo credit: Matthew L on Unsplash
