I remember coming in late at night as a teenager. I always followed curfew, but I sometimes came in late enough that everyone else in the house was asleep. Lights off. Soft breathing coming from the bedrooms. Except for my mom. She would be lying on the sofa in the front room, possibly dozing off but not able to retire to her bedroom with my father until she knew I was home safely. She was waiting for the click of the latch, for my footsteps in the entryway. Sometimes we would briefly chat about how my evening went—maybe a girls’ night with friends or even a date with a boy. Other times she would kiss me goodnight, and we’d both promptly feel our way through a dark hallway to bed, tired from our nocturnal ways.
I never thought a lot about why my mom waited for me to be securely tucked into bed before going to her own until my daughter began attending occasional late-night events. She is still younger than I was when I remember those scenes unfolding. Every once in a while, she attends a bonfire or birthday party that keeps her out past ten p.m. This feels quite late for a junior high age group, but perhaps this simply shows that I’m now forty and have lost all desire to be out on the town most nights. When my husband leaves to retrieve her, I find myself piddling at home, tired but not able to go to sleep.
And then it hits me. Myriads of mothers have felt this, the stretching of the tie that started in the womb but cannot be severed, despite the cutting of the umbilical cord. In the early days of parenthood, autonomy becomes a thing of the past as your schedule, body, and finances adjust to wholly providing for and protecting another. Yet once this cohesion becomes natural, the opposite occurs, and you must figure out how to let go in incremental measures.
What is loving another person if not an exercise in trust?
Yet this word can mean different things in parenting circles. When I attended prenatal birthing classes and read pregnancy books, preparing for the birth of our firstborn, I heard and read about the importance of trusting myself. Learning to listen to my body. Learning to rely on my instincts.
I value the birthing experiences I was able to have, trusting my body’s response to the wave of contractions, and I marvel at the beautiful way women’s bodies have been uniquely designed to give life. But beyond childbirth, in most situations, trusting myself alone rarely leads to very positive results regarding sound wisdom and theology. In fact, the biblical doctrine that “[t]he heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17.9 NIV) contrasts soundly against the social norm to be “true to your heart.”
To me, trust in parenting seems to be less about believing that I will always have an innate sense that will guide me and more about learning that it’s ok to not have all the answers because I am being equipped in incremental measures, regardless of whether I feel like it. Only the Holy Spirit can replace my “heart of stone” which turns inward for direction with a “heart of flesh” that turns upward for divine guidance (Ezekial 36.26 NIV). Trust also means learning I can’t contain my children. Though some of them are still small, my children are far too vast. They will continue to gain momentum and will someday launch into the world on their own.
I can only imagine the stretching I have yet to experience. Sending my children out into the world someday is both something I am excited for, as I seek to be faithful in equipping them, and something that feels unfathomable. Now that every bedroom in our home is full, how could one ever become empty?
The call to trust can sometimes be employed tritely. Let go and let God. Trust in parenting is no different. Banal phrases like They were God’s before they were yours are true, but they didn’t make it any easier to drop off my babies at daycare for the first time. I doubt they will make it any easier to watch them pledge loyalty to the new families they may start on their wedding days.
But trust makes it all bearable.
In the New Testament, James and John are often referenced as the “sons of Zebedee” (Mark 10.35 NIV). But they had a mother too. Despite the honor of her sons being chosen as Christ’s disciples, how might she have felt, watching them embark on an amazing calling that would be life-changing but would not include her? Would she have given her blessing had she known that one would face martyrdom and the other exile? It was trust that made it bearable. God is trustworthy, not just with our most precious things and ambitions but with our most precious people.
Distance. Less control. Lack of information. These are not really choices; they are not things parents can forever resist. As we ourselves matured and entered adulthood, many of our parents experienced these things as we breached the abyss from inexperience to experience and made our way into the world. Even those without children must learn how to let loved ones extend beyond themselves, how to trust the One who is trustworthy with their well-being. There are many from whom I have much to learn. Yet already I sense there is a choice: Clutching for a stasis that cannot possibly remain or seeking to live openhandedly.
I recently attended a memorial service where the adult daughter spoke of her recently departed mother. The daughter told of her own coming-of-age experience when she moved thousands of miles away from her parents at eighteen years old as a newlywed. Yet her mother faithfully phoned her weekly, a long-distance call that occurred long before cell phones, text messages, or email. As I listened, I realized that call was her mother’s version of staying awake until her daughter came home. She let her daughter launch, but she still provided a soft place for safety and comfort.
And so, I hold my children tightly. As they turn their puckered lips to mine, I know the kisses are numbered. They will not always kiss me this way. When will the last time be? When was the last time I kissed my parents this way? To be human is to sometimes overlook the monumental amongst the mundane. Yet trust is believing there will still be goodness once the last time passes. Trust is allowing ourselves to find joy in a moment that is bound to pass too quickly into eternity because eternity has never been ours to master.
The featured image, “Kirkstone Pass Down,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Charity Gibson is a Christ follower, writer, and professor. She holds a PhD in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and teaches literature and composition at College of the Ozarks (located near Branson, MO.)
She and her husband are raising four children and enjoy spending time together reading, being outside, and fellowshipping with extended family and friends. Charity is the author of The Working Homemaker: Employed Christian Moms Desiring a Thriving Homelife and regularly writes about topics pertaining to faith and family. She also hosts a monthly blog through her website.
Charity,
I felt each word intensely having released three young adults of my own over the last five years. Both my mother and one grandmother exhibited this same ‘insomnia of love’ till each was safely home. Heaven’s longing for broken humanity’s return, surely speaks here. Thank you!