It {what parents fear most}

We all blink. All of us.

Good parents blink. Bad parents blink. Even those of us in-the-middle, just-trying-to-be-decent parents blink.

In the seconds when we close our eyes– at night, when exhaustion consumes us, while our back is turned and we’re stirring the soup, in the millisecond it takes to reach into a diaper bag and retrieve a Kleenex for a snotty nose– things happen.

Oh my goodness, things happen.

Scary things.

I have personally turned around to find an 11-month old teetering precariously on a coffee table, a 2 year-old investigating a somehow unguarded outlet, a 4 year-old deciding to push a chair up to peek into a pot on the stove, a 2-month old blue in his crib.

And in those moments, my heart pounding, my worst fears screaming in my ears, I have been reduced to a feral, action-only creature whose only purpose is to stop It.

Because It is there. It is always there.

Danger.
Destruction.
Death.

Sometimes, there’s a deceptively safe distance between us and It. Sometimes, the car seat is enough. And the bumper pads on the sharp corner edges work. And the straps keep the baby snug in the high chair, happily spearing Cheerios with his forefinger.

And other times, It looms near, and nothing separates us from the truth that is always present, but often forgotten: we are not capable of ensuring the absolute health and wellbeing of our children.

If we could, SIDS would never be feared. No children would drown. Pill bottle caps would never open under prying toddler fingers. Burns would never happen. Teens wouldn’t wreck cars. Heck– 25 year-old servicemen– someone’s baby, after all–would not come home in caskets.

Friends, we are not enough. We are not the ultimate baby gate. We can not bubble wrap our children to a state of immortal untouchability.

Yes, we do our job. We stay on guard. We cut the risks. We make wise choices. We baby proof. We train them to be careful, to be on the lookout, to not run with scissors and no sticks near eyes for Pete’s sake! Not doing those things is negligence, pure and simple.

But we blink. We have to blink. Because we are not God.

The other day, I was listening in on a group of mothers dissecting the recent incident at the Cincinnati zoo, where a preschooler somehow made his way into the gorilla habitat. I sat nearby and listened close as the women– all Christian– reassured themselves that It would never find them.

I always keep my 3 year-old in a stroller. If he’s not running around, he can’t get into trouble.
We’ve taught our son to hold a hand at all times. There’s no letting go. Not ever.
I can’t believe that people would lose track of a preschooler in a crowd like that! I’ve never not known where my kids are!

I smiled and nodded, knowing how very important it is for mothers– for those of us charged with shepherding little souls day in and day out– to feel like we have the answer that will keep It away from the children we love so fiercely.

But ultimately? Ultimately, it is not within our power to war with all the possibilities.

We are not big enough to slay dragons, friends. We are not capable of seeing the future. We can’t know that the water bottle cap we lost track of in the backseat of the car today will be fished out by a chubby toddler’s hand four weeks from now and popped into a waiting mouth. We can’t know that the armchair we inherited from our grandmother will be the one and only thing that the crawling baby scales again and again. We can’t see that the dress we just bought our daughter will someday be worn in an ER while a doctor examines broken bones.

It is a many tentacled beast, and It needs a whole army and a mighty, mighty God to deliver It to where it belongs.

Eleven years ago, my best friend, Jenna, and I took our kids to the zoo. Between us, we had five children: 7, 5, two 3 year-olds, and a baby. The children had all been carefully trained to stay close, not talk to strangers, hold on to the stroller, stay in the stroller, don’t pick up trash, be safe! And yet …

Somehow, near the side of the elephant barn, I blinked.

Jack was one of the 3 year-olds. He was a curious adventurer of a boy (still is). And something caught his fancy right as I was distracted fishing a water bottle from the bottom of the stroller for his 5 year-old brother. I felt the weight shift in the stroller, stood up, and he was gone.

He was gone.

The little webbed nylon belt that had secured him in place was still there, clicked tight. But my blond baby was not. I caught sight of the red Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirt he loved so dearly just as he ducked under the chain marked “AUTHORIZED EMPLOYEES ONLY” and broke into a gleeful run.

Towards the elephant enclosure.

In case you don’t know it already, elephants are not always sweet, docile creatures. They are also not exactly small. Seeing my 40 pound preschooler darting towards them made me realize that It was very close. Very close indeed.

Because Jenna and I are Ninja Mommas with our own version of ESP that allows us to shove children at one another without speaking and somehow facilitate whatever needs to happen right then  God was merciful, we nabbed Jack before he managed to breach the last security line before actually entering the elephants’ enclosure. I still remember shaking as I carried him out of the zoo that day, replaying the moments leading up to his escape in my mind and trying to quantify it, trying to reassure myself that it would never, ever happen again.

But I couldn’t.

I had simply blinked.

I had simply blinked right in the millisecond that my sweet boy’s curiosity and sin nature collided, overruling what had been drilled into him time and time and time again over his short little life. Do not get out of the stroller. Do not ever get out of the stroller. Not ever. Ever. And in that tiny space, anything could have happened.

It didn’t. But It could have.

Easily. So easily.

Jack is 14 now, and my warnings to him have changed. “Where are you going with that hatchet? Watch your fingers, ok?” “Please, make sure you check your weight in the branches of that tree before you climb too high.” “Are you sure it’s an abandoned wasps’ nest?”

I do my due diligence. I am, after all, his mother.

But I no longer assume that I am enough. I no longer presume that its my presence that keeps him whole, my warnings that ward off danger. I no longer believe that it is my watchful eyes that keep him safe.

I do all the right things. But I am not God. I cannot conquer fear, and I most certainly cannot conquer the grave. I don’t control the stars, and I don’t know the whens and whys of every scrape or disaster each of my children will encounter. I do my best, as I am able. But I am fallible and He is not. And so…

I surrender my children–all of them, every day– to the Lord who does not blink. And I pray that it is His hand that catches them and guides their steps. Not just when I cannot, but at all times, for all of their days. And in that way, It may touch us, It may do its dirty work this side of heaven, but ultimately, It will not, cannot, win.