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This is the second chapter in the series on Opening Your Hands - The Art of Letting Go.
In this blog we will talk about the danger of posessivenss - something all moms are bent towards. Learn while your children are young to open your hands and it won't be as hard when you must.
I trust that you will be rewarded for the effort of reading. Take time to work through the questions at the end, slowly reading and pondering the truth in the verses. God's word will comfort and correct.
And Please read through to The Mother's Prayer at the end. Perhaps the pouring out of my heart to the Lord will help you to put into words the cry of your heart.
Carefree, she stepped into the sunlight,
her face uplifted to the sun;
While I,
aware of brewing storms
that etchedthe sky,
clutched at a fear
and nursed it.
Then I
saw her hand
outstretched
like a small child;
and while I watched,
Another Hand
reached down and clasped it.
I heard the distant thunder
with a smile.
from “Sitting By My Laughing Fire” by Ruth Bell Graham.
Loving adult children means letting them go. Mothering is the only job where, if done well under normal circumstances, a woman works herself out of a job. And it begins early with many letting-goes.
When your baby was first placed on your chest all red and wet, you and your world changed. Barring traumatic events in your own upbringing or an unexpected crisis in labor and delivery, this moment was filled with overwhelming joy and love. You may have wondered if you ever knew what it truly meant to love someone before. A totally helpless human being was now dependent completely on you, and you rejoiced to meet his every need.
You were life to that child. She needed everything from you. You fed, clothed, cleaned and rocked her to sleep. It’s likely that you stood up rocking that child all day and night time too. A few weeks (months?) later in a sleep deprived state, you decided to lay the baby down while still awake and let her cry it out. That was the first letting-go. Sometime later you introduced that child to whatever was the fashionable first foods of the day. My mother told me my first food was ground-up lamb. My children all had organic rice cereal. My grandbabies are discovering smashed avocados. Whatever was on the spoon, it was another step in letting that child go. No longer would she be fully dependent on you for nourishment.
If you’ve been a mom, you are aware of all these letting-goes. And you delighted in most of them. All the important milestones were celebrated. Rolling over, walking, talking. You should have known that one day your child would say goodbye and walk away. Why weren’t we prepared? Moms are experts at delaying the inevitable.
I had two daughters. The first daughter’s wedding was such an amazing affair - until it wasn’t. We had done so well learning to work together in the planning and the day of was worth it all. It began early and ended late. It was the ending that took me by surprise. Someone announced, “Everybody gather outside to send off Mr. and Mrs. So and So” and my heart broke. She was leaving! And she wasn’t taking my last name with her! I ugly cried right then and there. Sobbed. No logic could convince me that I hadn’t just lost my daughter and would never see her again!
My second one was twelve when the first one got engaged. I didn’t purposely freeze her in time at that age, but something in my deep subconscious didn’t want her to grow up, get married and leave like her older sister. When three years later she began talking about taking Driver’s Ed classes, I seriously wondered what this twelve year old was thinking! I really had no clue she was fifteen! I did this again, twice. I mentally kept her as an eighteen year old until she graduated from college. Even now, knowing she has been married several years and her first child is over two years old, I “honestly” told someone she is twenty-two.
With six children I have had more than enough letting-goes. I’d like to say they have gotten easier, but my last child, who is still my baby though he graduated from college a year ago, will tell you differently. But I am learning. I am realizing that it is God’s responsibility to never let go of them, not mine. I am realigning my thinking as to what is my true identity in life. I am repenting of making idols out of motherhood. Let’s start talking about that first one. A mom needs to beware of confusing stewardship with ownership.
Your children Belong to God.
My first daughter was baptized when she was sixteen. How can one put in words the joy of seeing your child accept your faith as her own? We gathered several folks to our home after the service to celebrate. We invited her Sunday School teachers, Girl’s Club leaders, High school youth group sponsors, and an older woman in the church who had prayed faithfully for her. I was deeply struck by the significance of the church family. Her church family. She was no longer just mine. She was their daughter. Their sister. I thought of the time Jesus was told his family was outside and wanted to talk to him. His answer, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Matthew 12:48-50
My daughter was part of a bigger family now. She now had many mothers and siblings. And she had one Heavenly father over all who loved her more than I ever could.
I found the poem by Ruth Bell Graham (quoted at the top of this chapter) the summer this daughter was packing up to go away to college. To the wonderment of my husband, I had been quietly tearing up during major events of her senior year of high school. I knew what was coming. I was silently saying goodbye to so many lasts. The last holiday everyone would be living in our home. The last piano lesson. The last concert. The last Sunday we would all piled in the car to go to church. The last meal we would all share together as a family. The last night.
The goodbye at the dorm was hard. But good. We had enjoyed the Target run to get all the things she now knew she needed. We had gone out to dinner with her roommate and her roommate’s parents. We had sat through orientation. All good. She was where God had led. We were confident of that. By that weekend, I don’t think I had any more tears left in me to cry. This couldn’t be said for my husband. In what I’ve heard is more typical than expected, he sniffled most of the three hour car ride home!
I had printed out the Graham poem, put it in a cute frame and secretly left it on our daughter’s new book case. In that frame was my commitment to let her go into the hand of God who had been holding her since her first breath. There would be thunder ahead. I knew we both knew the God of the storms.
Four years later - just before her wedding - she pulled out that poem and read it back to me. I needed to hear it again. Because there is never just one letting go; There are continual letting goes.
Letting go means coming to terms with the fact that your children were really never yours. They have always belonged to their Creator. You were a steward. They were given to you for your safekeeping until the time He knew they were ready to walk in the good works that He had prepared for them.
This does not minimize your role. It just puts it in a healthy perspective.
A steward is not the owner. A steward must faithfully carry out the wishes of her master. God is seeking godly offspring. (Mal. 2:15). He desires that children be brought up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Eph. 6:4). A steward of children is on duty 24/7. But not forever. Your role is extremely important and God chose you specifically for it. Just remember, it has an end date.
It is very easy to slip from a steward mentality to one of an owner. We adamantly say, “These are MY children after all! I carried them, gave birth to them, cleaned up after their messes, got them out of scrapes, got them through those difficult courses, taught them to drive. Well, it seems I probably taught them anything worthwhile that they know! They owe me big time, and I own them because of it. I have earned the right to hold on to them as long as I want to, and I don’t plan on letting them go any time soon.”
OK - You may not have verbalized these problematic thoughts, but we hold on to our children in many ways. We make all the important decisions for them. We coddle them or cover up their wrongs and foolishness. We don’t let them take on age appropriate risks and activities. We worry when they are on their own. We ask, and expect long answers to, countless questions about where they have been and what they have done and who they have done it with. We make demands upon their time. We have, usually unspoken, expectations of how they should honor us for our “love and devotion” to them. We assign motives of ungratefulness, disrespect or cruelty to innocent attempts at maturing. We are jealous of their other friends often attempting to hang out as one of the squad so we don’t feel neglected. We can be overly involved or critical of any love interest.
A possessive mother does horrible damage to her children. Anyone that you try to chain to yourself will either shrivel into nothingness or beat himself up trying to escape. Helpless 20 or 30 year olds are no longer just the brunt of comedy stand ups. They live in basements in your neighborhood. Angry and destructive adult children who are estranged from their families are repeating the same mistakes in their own families.
In Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis masterfully describes a woman, Orual, who has taken on the role of mother to her younger sister, Psyche, and in the course of their lives becomes intensely possessive of her. Of course, she can not see this. She does not have “the face” to see her own heart and the damage that she does. Towards the end she comes face to face with the gods who have stolen her sister from her. In volcanic anger she explodes:
“We’d rather you drank their blood than stole their hearts. We’d rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal. . . . .
The girl was mine. What right had you to steal her away into your dreadful heights? . . .
I was my own and Psyche was mine and no one else had any right to her. . . .
What should I care for some horrible new happiness which I hadn’t given her and which separated her from me? Do you think I wanted her to be happy that way? . . .
Did you ever remember whose the girl was?
She was mine. Mine.”
I can’t read these words without feeling squeamish. Though I hope I am far from becoming Orual, I hear in her words thoughts that I recognize. The path from faithful steward to demanding owner is well worn. Innocent, casual conversation reinforces it. “Tell me about your children.” “My daughter just finished 3rd grade.” “My son won the championship game.” “Our kids are coming home for the holidays.” The necessary duties and financial responsibilities of a mom encourages ownership. Because once you needed to do everything for a child, sometimes even thinking for her, it is later hard to step back and let her walk on her own. Because you pay for everything, it is easy to assume you are owed everything.
C. S. Lewis again speaks to how common it is for motherly love to become corrupted In The Great DIvorce. Here we meet a mother whose instinctive love for her son has been distorted into something quite destructive. It was selfish, possessive, demanding, “a poor, prickly, astringent sort of thing.” He argues that any emotion or any gift that is expressed or enjoyed apart from the Giver of all good gifts will in the end be perverted. Augustine called this a disordered love. It is a good thing that has gone terribly wrong.
We are stewards of a loving master. It is him that we are to love with all our heart and strength. It is in him that we are to find true joy. He is abundant and generous in his giving. We are never to forget him in the enjoyment of his gifts. Moses cautioned the Israelites about the temptation they would face as they entered into the Promised Land. He knew it would be easy to become so enthralled with good things that they may neglect the God who gave them those good things.
“And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.” (Deut. 6:10-13).
You did not weave the DNA of your child as you carried her in your womb. You did not determine her length or weight or eye color. You did not hardwire her personality or gift her with talents. You have not decreed everyday that she will live. This is the Lord’s doing. She is his. And so are you.
Because you are only a steward and only for a season, the Lord does not expect you to be the sole superintendent of your children’s growth or sanctification. You can not be nor are you expected to be everything for them. When they leave your care, you will be very aware of the things you didn’t talk about. The character flaws that still exist. The life lessons that have not been learned. Even God’s perfect son left this earth while his disciples had much to learn! How much more does God know that as sinful fallen parents we will not do our job perfectly.He does not expect us to. He asks that we be faithful. To Him.
Have you neglected him? Are you thankful for his gifts? Is your heart still moved by who he is in holiness and goodness? Are you spending time in the pursuit of being rooted and grounded in his love? (Eph. 3:14-21). Are you actively seeking to serve him in all you do?
The image of a steward puts your role as mother into perspective. The perspective of all of life planned by a good and wise God. The perspective that eighteen brimming-with-life years are but few in light of a full eighty years of life. It is helpful to ponder that if you live to be eighty, you will probably relate to your child at least twice as long as an adult child than you did as a child at home. Steward them well and let them go.
Thoughts to Ponder
Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. 1 Cor. 4:2
Why do you think the most important quality in a steward is faithfulness?
What do you think it looks like to be a faithful steward of your children? How does that look different from owning them?
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace. 1 Peter 4:10
How is our giftedness connected to God’s grace?
In what ways have you been individually gifted to serve your children well?
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Col. 3:23,24
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 1 Peter 1:3,4
What is the reward that the Lord promises those who serve Him?
What kind of reward are you looking for as a parent?
For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. Heb. 6:10
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. 1 Cor. 15:58
If the Lord is your master, what kind of master are you working for?
If the Lord is your master, what is your motivation for working hard at raising your children well?
A Mother’s Prayer
My Master and my Lord,
I am yours because you made me. I am yours because you bought me with the precious blood of your son. I am yours because your love for me has captured my heart and will. Such wisdom and grace and mercy!
But like the forgiven servant who demands payment from his fellow servant, (Matt. 18:21-33) I so quickly turn from your gracious love to demanding that the children you have given me to steward must love and serve me: make me happy, make me proud, and pay me back for all my sacrifices for them.
I cling to them in desperation because I believe that they are Mine!
But they are yours. You wove them together in my womb. You wrote all their days in your book before they saw the light of day. You gave them breath when their lungs first filled with air. You have sustained them day and night. They are yours.
You have called me to serve them for a while. To be your hands and feet to them. To teach them, set examples for them, set the path of life before them. All along knowing that you were behind my serving and giving and teaching. Strengthening me for the task. Giving me joy in the work. It was never me, myself and I who cared for them. I have always been only an unworthy servant (Luke 17:7) who had to look to your hands for provision and direction. (Ps. 123:2). When the time comes to love them by letting them go, remind me that my child and I both belong to you. The best place for either of us to be is in your tender care. Change my heart so that I long more than anything else to hear you say, “Well done good and faithful servant.” (Mat. 25:21).