Letting them go, letting them grow

Even though by this time tomorrow I will be well-past middle age -- since I have no intention of living to the ripe old age of 110 -- I find I still have a lot to learn. An ongoing lesson, one I continue to have to learn and relearn, is how to free others so that they too can learn. I made some progress on that one earlier this year when our "Colorado Girls" came to spend a week with Grandpa and Grandma.

Our granddaughters, 7 and 9 at the time of their visit, were astonished when I announced that I would drop them off at the swimming pool and would pick them up at 3 p.m., allowing them two full hours of fun in the sun. (I had accompanied them to the pool the day before and ascertained their abilities, both in the water and in the social setting, determining that their maturity levels were adequate for the next day's challenge.) They did great, spending all of their snack money without touching the funds designated for the pay phone just outside the pool. The next time they went swimming, they got to decide how long they could stay on their third day of abbreviated self-responsibility. They took off without looking back. One of many lessons in independence, learned.

Before I could even think of leaving the girls at the pool, I had to learn, seemingly all over again, how to trust. Not them. Not other people. Not even myself. I needed to replenish my trust in God.

My overriding tendency as a mother was to hover. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I began shopping for color coordinated bubble wrap, my protective instincts already front and center, clamoring for my undivided attention.

When Ben was still a babe in arms, we stayed at a rustic cabin in Shell Canyon in Wyoming, with another couple. We spent the late fall day hiking, enjoyed a rare dinner out at a local steak house and as the day drew to a close, sat around the cabin telling stories. Kari, the other young wife, regaled us with stories of the wild animals in the region. (The cabin belonged to her family.)

One of her stories involved weasels and how they could drain the blood from a baby lamb or a even human baby, without anyone even knowing they were around.

Alarmed, I asked, "Are there still weasels out here?"

"Of course," she said.

We had made a pallet of baby blankets and quilts for Ben on the floor of the main room, in front of the heater and he was sleeping peacefully there when we retired. Even though I was physically exhausted after hiking the better part of the day, I could not get to sleep. I kept thinking about those weasels and my 4-month-old son, sleeping on the floor in the next room. I became convinced that some bloodthirsty weasel was prowling about, waiting for me to succumb to my weariness so that he could slink into the cabin and drain the life blood out of my son.

When asked the next morning why I was sleeping on the floor, forming a semi-circle around Ben, I murmured, "So the weasels don't get him." Everyone got a kick out of that one and didn't hesitate to share my foolishness at every opportunity, always eliciting uncontrollable laughter in the retelling. I didn't think it was the least bit funny.

I've often said, if it weren't for Danny's influence in letting knees get skinned, toes get stubbed and fingers burned, I would still have three children, grown but unscarred, living in my view, bubble wrap of various hues enveloping them. I know they much prefer the scars. They were never intended to live in bubble wrap.

Knowing what I know now -- namely that skinned knees and stubbed toes are the least of their wounds -- I still sometimes fear that I failed miserably as a parent. After all, parents are supposed to provide and protect, all the while preparing children to take their rightful place in the world. But who knew the world would fall so far and so fast so as to sweep those children far from what they learned and lived as children?

Even raising them with absolute truth -- who we are, who God is and what he expects from those who will follow him -- is no guarantee that they will escape the world unscathed or unchanged. Often heard as a promise, Proverbs 22:6 reads "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." This proverb, unfortunately, is not an ironclad guarantee. To believe otherwise is to negate individual free will. Some children, raised in "the Way," do, in fact depart from it, much to their parents' heartache and often to their own peril. That they may someday do so, however, does not relieve parents of their responsibility to train the child "in the way he should go."

My mother-in-law's grandmother had a saying about children that holds true yet today, "When they're small, they step on your toes. When they grow up, they step on your heart."

I stepped on my mother's heart innumerable times, as well as my father's. At the time, I could not see the damage my actions inflicted. It is only now, when my own heart is bleeding, that I can clearly see the imprint of my ladies size 10 on theirs. But, I can also clearly see those same footprints, halting and clumsy, stumbling behind the footsteps of my Savior. And one day, some day soon, I hope to see the footprints of my children, now imbedded on my heart, following that same Savior, realizing the hope Solomon verbalized in the second clause of the proverb, "When he is old, he will not turn from it."

Until then, it is time to trust again the heart of my Father. Just as he led me safely through paths not of his choosing to the one of his choosing, I can trust him to do the same for them, all the while wrapping himself around them, protecting them from bloodthirsty weasels.

"He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And he set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm." Psalm 40:2 (NAS)

I don't have all the answers, but I know the One who does. Let's walk together for awhile and discover Him; together.

Dawn