“Let Go and Let God”

I’m not sure who coined that phrase but it’s often said frequently and with very little thought.

We let it slide off our tongues like syrup. Meant to comfort others and advise them. As parents, it’s harder to take our own advice.

As a mom, we don’t always want to let God do His thing. We want to hang on tightly to our kids, not let go.

We want to keep them safe. We want to keep them happy. We want to keep them successful in the worldly sense.

Evil lurks around every corner. We know this. We do not want to let go and let God.

I know. I experience this every day as a mom. It’s starts early – the day they are born. We want to control, manage and manipulate. Often in good ways. As young children, they do need their mom to look out for them. But sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous.

I let my pre-schooler climb the big monkey bars. With out me hovering over him. I let him climb all kinds of stuff because he was a climber. I’d stand close but I didn’t help unless absolutely necessary. I’d hear other parents gasp.

I’d watch parents practically climb the three step slide for their kids. Was that helping the child? It didn’t pose any serious danger even if they fell. They weren’t letting the child learn some valuable information about themselves and about failing and trying again. And again.

As teens, I find the desire to control gets worse. As a parent, we have an idea of what our kids face every day. Temptations, evil, too many choices in all areas of their lives. Bullies. The world tries to confuse them. I want to protect them from it all. But I can’t.

Then there’s our own failures as parents. Our short tempers, sharp tongues and too high expectations of both our children and ourselves. To name a few. It will leave a mark.

We may think we have control but as I write this, I realize we have very little. And the tighter we hold onto it, the less influence we have.

We can’t be everywhere our kids go. We can’t heal every wound. We might even be the perpetrator of that wound. We can’t control everything in our kids lives. I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that some of the bad stuff, the failures, the hurts, may be the things we have to Let Go and Let God.

It might be those very things we want to spare our kids from, that God will use to shape them into who He created them to be. It might be what He uses to bring them closer to Him or back to Him. He may use those things to prepare them for the future. To forge them into the warriors He needs for His army. Redemption.

I’d hate to get in the way of that. As I prepare to let my first born, go into the wilds of high school and take further steps into the world and away from me, I have to remind myself that God has got this, not me. He’s got him, my curious climber.

“We cannot wrap our minds around God’s wisdom and knowledge! Its depths can never be measured! We cannot understand His judgments or explain the mysterious ways that He works!”

Romans 11:33