This week, our family enters into a brand new season. Our youngest is starting Kindergarten, so for the first time since we became parents, our kids will be in school full-time. I remember thinking about this day when they were babies and feeling like it was light-years away. But as it turns out, time actually does fly, you legitimately should not blink, and treasuring every moment is really great advice after all. Who knew?!
The beginning of a new school year brings so many emotions – thankfulness for the beauty of summers well spent, eagerness for schedule and routine, fear of the unknown, and anxiety about letting go. Whether your kids go to public school, private school, or home school, these feelings are the same. Each day that passes, our children grow a little more independent and a little bit closer to adulthood, whether we are ready or not. While I love watching my kids blossom into who God has created them to be, I do not love everything that comes with that. I loved the days of being able to hold them in my arms, the days of being able to protect them from danger, the days of being their entire world. While these all came with good intentions, I have to be honest that one of the things I really loved was being in control. I spent a good part of the beginning of my motherhood journey believing that if I could love them enough, hold them close, and shield them from all things evil, then they would be safe. I wish with everything in me this was true, but it just simply isn’t. How do I know this? Because well-loved babies still enter the arms of Jesus before they’re even born. Highly protected kids still get cancer diagnoses. Prayed for children still turn to the things their parents prayed against.
I remember rocking my newborn little girl to sleep one night and weeping over all of the potential dangers she would face in her life. (Postpartum hormones are the best, am I right?) I was lamenting to God about all the fears I had – what if she’s in a car accident and her car seat wasn’t installed correctly? What if she catches some terrible disease and the doctors can’t find the answers? What if a boy breaks her heart one day? What if her best friend betrays her? And do not even get me started on the stress of her having a phone eventually! I remember saying, “I just wish I was in control of everything!” And God, in his ever so patient and gentle way, spoke to my heart and said, “I’m so glad you’re not, because it means I am.”
In Isaiah 6, Isaiah has a vision of God in all of his glory. He’s seated on a throne, the train of his robe fills the temple, heavenly creatures are flying all around saying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is filled with his glory!” It’s the epitome of holiness. Only after seeing this is Isaiah able to identify his own unholiness and says, “Woe to me, I am ruined, and I am a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips.” When we see God in all of his glory, we realize just how small we are. And in addition, when we see God and the control he has over all things, we realize just how little we actually have.
This week as we send our kids off to school – whether in the drop-off line, to the bus stop, to our kitchen table, or to a college campus – let’s thank God that we are not in control, that the responsibility for their protection, their future, their salvation, and their sanctification is not in our hands.
Here is an excerpt from “A Liturgy for Dropping Off a Child at School” from Every Moment Holy, Volume III.
May this bittersweet pang point me toward
a deeper truth, where each small goodbye—
be it silly or tense, tired or tender—is a chance
to give thanks for the gift of this child,
and to remember that they are neither
my possession nor my identity.I am not the author of their story, Lord.
You are.
I am not their ultimate protector, Lord.
You are.
This is both a relief and a surrender,
as I release the prideful notion
that my proximity secures their safety.
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