As a mom, do I have a control problem? Maybe. Do I have a responsibility problem? Definitely.
I’ve taken the StrengthsFinders assessment twice in the past twenty years; both times, responsibility was way up near the top. If I agree to do something, I will do it, and I will do it well, so help me God – or lose my sanity, my sleep, or my good sense in the attempt.
Raising teenagers makes me lose all of the above.
I tried so hard to do All the Good Parenting Things. I made them drink Kiefer, read countless books with them, prayed and played, showed and shared. I taught them to come when I called; I re-learned pre-algebra twice; I put limits on their screen time. I take my job so seriously. I am the Responsiblest Mom of them all.
And now I have four teenagers, with adulthood lurking around every corner, and I feel the desperate urgency looming over me that my time left with them is short. So Gil and I made an Adulting List that they must check off, and we are teaching them to drive, interview, clean, and budget. As they begin to make their own choices, I warn and cajole, nudge and prod.
Yet every time they feel lost or do something foolish or don’t show integrity, I feel responsible. Somewhere, at some time, I must have made a wrong parenting choice.
Do I feel more weight of responsibility because I am an adoptive mom? I chose these kids. I was responsible for plucking them out of the trajectory of their lives, giving them a new story. If they struggle with their identity, if they feel alone or rejected or out of place, and if that propels them to make a bad choice, it must be my fault. I pull back the curtains and peek under the rugs, searching for my responsibility.
So I ruminate. Maybe we should have come back to the States earlier. Or later. Perhaps we should have chosen a different schooling option. Maybe we should have moved to a different city, or a different school, or a different neighborhood. If only I’d read The Connected Child a few years earlier. If only we’d found that therapist four years ago. If only I could go back and emphasize this, tweak that, add a dash of this.
Of course, this does nothing to change anything about the present.
I decide they just need reminding. Oh, I must not have taught them that well enough. I must not have gotten through to them the previous fifty times. Obviously, I need to tell them again. In a different way. With a different emphasis.
This often doesn’t go well. “Don’t scold me, Mom,” he says, frustrated. Scold you? Here I thought I was giving you fantastic advice that plainly hasn’t registered yet.
So I try harder to keep my mouth shut, and all those unsaid words settle into my stomach and languish there, gurgling and squeezing.
Then, one morning, she comes bounding over to me with a giant lightbulb hovering over her head. “Mom! I realized that I have so much energy the next day if I don’t go to bed too late!” Or another time: “Mom! I realized that if I finish all my homework, my grade goes up!”
I wish I could say I responded with, “How lovely, dear. Good for you.”
But no. Instead, I deadpan (sarcasm oozing out of my pores). “Wow, how unfortunate no one ever told you that before.”
Seriously. If the reality is that they have got to figure these things out for themselves, why do I even try? Well, duh. Because I Am Responsible.
I can pretend that all this responsibility makes me a good mother, but what it really comes down to is that I don’t trust God with my children.
I’ve come a long way in learning to trust God with my own life. Over 48 years, I’ve come to a point of steady peace in his provision and his purpose.
I might not immediately trust him with whatever life throws at me, but again and again, I’ve learned to rest on what I know to be true. God is good and in control. He loves me. He knows what is best for me. I am convinced that no matter what I experience or how much of me has to die, resurrection is coming. I stake my life on this. It defines my existence.
But I do not trust God with my children. Because no matter how much I scour Scripture for reassurance, I find no guarantee that he promises their lives will be redeemed. There are no promises that they will have happy marriages, become contributing members of society, or avoid drugs-porn-gambling-divorce-abuse-prison. I lament with Jesus-loving friends who are a decade or two beyond me and grieving these exact things for their children.
And the hardest part? I cannot save my children’s souls. They are their own people. They must choose for themselves who they will serve. I can provide all the nurture, exhortation, and encouragement in the world, but at the end of the day, they will stand before God alone, without me.
I’ve told God, on more than one occasion, that this is unacceptable to me. God can’t expect me to spend twenty years raising these children, wringing out my heart and hanging it out to dry, and then be okay with the notion that they still may choose to turn their backs on him. That God, in his sovereignty, might not save them.
So instead, I, in my puny finiteness, choose to take matters into my own hands. I must be responsible for the outcome of my children’s souls.
Of course, when I write it down like that, it sounds incredibly stupid. But it doesn’t prevent me from trying. I try and I try and I try and I think that if I can just get this parenting thing right, I can save them.
Responsibility is an admirable quality until it becomes an attempt to be God.
I must accept the agonizing truth that these children have never been, and never will be, mine. And that’s not just because I adopted them. God gave them to me for a time to love and discipline, teach and nurture, but he knew I would be finite and imperfect. He knew that I wouldn’t make all the decisions correctly; he knew that there would be hundreds of circumstances outside my control; he knew that there would be many, many aspects of their story that would not be in my jurisdiction to write.
I am only part of their stories – granted, a big part, an important part, and it is right that I take it seriously. But I am not the author.
This doesn’t mean that it is sinful for me to bear the weight of concern for my children. I find it poignant that Paul lists his “concern for the churches” as part of the list of intense trials that he bears, alongside hunger, prison, and torture (II Cor. 11:28). And in contrast, he says, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4). If Paul’s emotions can rise and fall based on the spiritual condition of his spiritual children, then certainly the same is true for all kinds of children.
But there is a place where my responsibility ends. I cannot, and never will be, the savior of my children.
Releasing my children to God’s story for their lives is, perhaps, the greatest struggle of trust I have ever faced or ever will. Yet somehow, I must. God may allow them to hurt or fail and make terrible mistakes to show them why they need grace and why they need him. Even then, I must accept that they may come to that point when they are flat on their faces and still do not choose him.
Yet God is still God. He is still good. He is still in control. And I can beat my fists against his chest and plead and scream and demand, but in the end, I must submit to the truth that he is the King of the Universe, and I am but the creation. Somehow, I must still trust him, even with my children. Where else would I go? He holds the words of eternal life.
Related:
Raising Up a Child in an Age of Deconstruction
Have I Failed My Children?
What Have I Done to My Children?
