Safe above saved

I knew it would come, knew she would say it before her time in Idaho was up:

“I might stay, Momma. I hear God saying something, but I’m not sure what it is yet. Maybe it’s stay.”

You may have asked yourself what the sound of a mother’s heart simultaneously breaking and singing sounds like. Do yourself a favor–try not to find out.


Truthfully, my 18 year-old daughter comes by her “maybe I’ll stay a thousand miles from you” honestly. Her father and I have simply refused to live the kind of lives that fit into safe, tidy boxes. Pick any thing that defines our family, and it probably involved some aspect of swimming upstream. One income. Homeschooling. Adoption from foster care. Nepal. Why, then, would our daughter be any different?

Mothers worry. We know this down in our bones: the price of holding a child to your neck and feeling his breathing gradually fall into step with your own is to have your heart intertwined with his forever. You will sit up on feverish nights and pray sickness away. You will wince at hurts real and perceived. You will grieve the losses and dance in the victories. Forever, you will want the best for this little soul entrusted to your care.

But let’s be honest–some children worry us more than others. They touch our softest, deepest heart-places and we link with that need in an almost primal way. Quite often, these are the selfsame children who seem programmed–almost from the moment they take their first breath–to chafe and kick against the very emotions that we ourselves can not help but lay over them like warm blankets on crisp nights. Why, Lord, why?

Safe above saved | To Sow a Seed

You may have a child like this in your own heart and home. Unabashedly independent, yet still so tender. Curious, but somehow nervous, as if his own explorations might bring him to a place where the whole applecart of his tenuous little being might be upended. Needy. Passionate. Unique.

We look at these children as they grow into young adults– and beyond–as if they are still the little one who will not behave. You are still escaping from your play-pen, straying into the unsafe places, and finding ways to vex me … when all I’m trying to do is make you happy!

Because surely, if anyone knows the key to a child’s happiness, it’s her mother, right? I know that I ascribe to this theory. Try this, you’ll like it. Read this book, you’ll enjoy it. You will tire of that sport, dear. Wear your coat, you’ll get cold. How different is this from telling your daughter she should move back to the city you are currently calling home, where you can put a roof over her head, fill her belly? How much more peaceful is it to be the mother of children–even adult children–who are accounted for day and night? Who are financially secure? Who have all they could ever ask for? Whose lives are as easy and comfortable as you could ever ask?

While discussing Nepal years ago, we saw fear and hurt and rejection intermingled with the support and love of our family, and I understand. I don’t know what it’s like to wonder if my son is working, sleep-addled and exhausted, through yet another overtime shift to pay for Christmas gifts this year. I don’t have to wonder if my girls are overextended, if they are adored as they ought to be, or if they are just a means to an end to someone who takes them for granted. But I have lived more than half a decade apart from Babita, wondering if she is sick or well, praying that there is ample food on her plate. Until the earthquake this spring, though, I had never felt my stomach twist and my mouth go dry at the thought that something had happened … and I was not there. I’m a newcomer to these hardest parts of growing kids. And yes, I am treasuring all of these things up in my heart. Someday, after all, I will be the mother of boys who are no longer boys, but men– and girls who are called wife. Someday, all of these prayers will replace the seemingly simple ones I pray over my children now.

My mother’s mother reportedly said, “Little children, little worries. Big children, big worries.”  I see that it is true now. As my children stretch their wings and begin to own the journey God has for them in this life, I have no more assurances of seeing those faces every morning or having those changing voices laughing around my table for a lifetime. I have no promise that God’s purpose for them will plant them a few hours from my door, or even on the same continent. I have no reason to assume that there will not be hurt or rejection or exhaustion or even danger in their call.

I’ll be honest, my heart leaps with delight at the thought of three, five, seven branches of our tree popping up in the hardest-to-reach areas of the globe. Already, the mother in me mourns the missed Thanksgiving turkeys and the birthdays without cupcakes, yes. But on a larger scale, I admit that I dream of being the kind of woman who God uses to multiply not just through my own actions, but throughout His Kingdom in a mighty movement of seed-planting.

I know in whose hands I have placed my children. And trust me, they are far better off with Him than they would ever be in the safe boxes which I might construct for them. So my reply to Mary Hannah, pondering God’s will on the other side of the country? Pray. Pray, honey. Daddy and I will pray with you. And if this is where you are meant to be, He will make it clear.

Can I admit how much it hurts to say that? Even more so … to actually do it? To come before God, to lay down my child at His feet and say, “You gave her to us, but we knew she was Yours all along. Use her.”

My hope is that I can keep this momentum, that my heart stays fixed on this desire. Even as my children grow, and their leashes get longer and longer, and the stakes for their hearts just creep higher … Lord, never let me forget that risks taken in Your Name are to be applauded, not run through a cost-benefit analysis. Let me grit my teeth through the feats of faith that You might lead my children through as You use them for Your purposes. Let me be the first one to step up in prayer and practice.

And most of all, Lord Jesus, let me never value safe above saved. Especially not when it comes to my own beloved children.

3 thoughts on “Safe above saved

  1. Beautifully said!! You spoke from my heart as a mom as well, although different circumstances. A mother’s work is never done and we must ALWAYS pray for our children.

  2. Whoah. This is beautiful. Truly stunning. Being a mother and having “our hearts intertwined” with our childen sure is profound and complex isn’t it? My three kids are still close enough where they can hear me bellowing through my blow-born to come in closer, but soon enough, I’ll be where you are, needing to learn how to let go. God help me.

  3. Oh Heather. Life is not meant to be easy.
    Safety is only in God’s hand.
    xo

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