Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.
Psalm 46:10
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
Matthew 6:19-20
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9
I took my daily prayer walk along the beach today. God’s voice was pretty clear: be still and know that I am God.
“Ok,” I said.
I looked at the blue-green gulf, sparkling beneath the early afternoon sun, the sea gulls white against the blue sky, children playing in the sand, parents, their heads bent protectively down to tend them. What a beautiful world.
I prayed, and the same prayer, like a broken record skipped over and over again in my head. Why isn’t my son calling me? Why has he stopped contact? Why is he so eager to find things to be angry with me about? Why, why, why?
Life is a constant letting go. I know that. But when it is your children you have to let go, the treasures of your heart, it’s a lot easier said than done.
I thought about the verse “don’t store up treasures here on earth but instead in heaven” and wondered if the treasures I was storing up here on earth might be my children.
Is that the meaning of the Abraham/Isaac story? God knew that children were such a precious gift that hubris becomes an issue for loving human parents?
It’s true. I want to be God for my children. I want to guide them, protect them, love them with everything I am. And in return, I want them to love me.
But I have to be able to let them go.
I have to be as obedient as Abraham. I have to offer them up to the real God.
And it’s not just once. I have to do it over and over again. It is the hardest thing I have ever done.
My heart yearns for contact with my son. My heart yearns for his presence. My heart yearns for him to let me know with his calls, his texts, his visits that I matter to him.
But God never said that I would see this promised land with my son, a place where my son would actually want to be around me. That was not part of the parent-package God gave me when he filled my arms with the precious gift of my son.
God did promise that he would be with me when my son left. So I have to fill that yearning with God who promises that His grace is sufficient. I have to trust Him.
So with creaky arms, I lift up my son. I hand him off to God, my fingers clinging to his shirt, and God gently, patiently peeling them off. I lift him up like Abraham lifted up Isaac and I give thanks, I do, for all the good things in my life and in his.