My son loves listening to hymns before bed each night. When he was a preschooler, one of his favorites was Hymn 500 by Susan Booth Mack Snipes from the Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430–603. The refrain reads in part, “Tender mercies, oh tender mercies, / Tender mercies are holding me.”
At one point, he struggled with frequent nightmares. My husband and I tried reasoning with him and following online tips to solve the problem, but nothing was working. Then, one evening before bed, we talked with him about how next time he had a scary dream, he could ask God what he needed to know. And doing so would let him see how God was actually in control of the situation.
The first thing next morning, my son said he’d had a scary dream the night before . . . “but—tender mercies!” he said to me sweetly. He was totally at peace and went about his day normally. That was several years ago, and the problem never returned.
