Please join me in welcoming the final guest poster for this week:  Brandy, The Marathon Mom. You know how I have four boy children? Yeah…Brandy has SEVEN. Boys.  Uh-huh. And I thought my grocery budget looked scary for the future. You’ll love Brandy’s insights and thoughts entitiled, In His Hands.

As a mother of many, I find myself regularly facing the challenge of trusting God with my children. It’s an interesting place, being so close to my due date, trusting God for a wonderful birth and a healthy baby, and at the same time, trusting Him to help me guide my pre-teen son as he grows into a man. And not to mention, the 9, 7, 5, 4, and 2 year old boys in the middle, who I am also responsible for trusting to God.
 
It’s a struggle of the heart, for sure, as I want to pull my babies close, protect them, shelter them from the ways of the world, and for some ages, that is entirely appropriate. But at some point, as my child’s mother, I am confronted by the fact that all of the hard work, love, commitment, sheltering and training must come to fruition as I ultimately release my child from my hands and into the world, and allow him to go and do and be all God has called him to go and do and be. I am not quite there yet, even with our oldest, as it is a process. But God has definitely started the work in my heart and has even begun to illustrate for me quite graphically, what that process will look like as I begin to release my sons, one by one, into their God-given destinies.
 
God reminded me again last night that I could trust Him with my children, when one of our younger sons narrowly escaped a potentially bad crash on a bike. Our four year old, Drew, went ahead of me on his bike, still with training wheels, in the dark last night. Not far behind him, I assumed my normal position behind the stroller and watched as he began to coast. 
 
Downhill. FAST. FASTER…..and FASTER STILL.
 
And suddenly I realized, all within a split second, that there would be no way I could abandon the stroller and sprint with my 9 month pregnant belly in his direction to save him from a terrible fall right into the street. And I began to yell, “Drew, fall in the grass, FALL IN THE GRASS!!!” And the next split second I realized a car could be coming to meet him at the exact time of his crash. The other half of that second, I prayed the fastest and yet most heartfelt prayers a mother could muster up – out loud – “Jesus, protect him!!!” Boys from the neighborhood and some of our older sons saw what was about to happen and took off at lightning speed to catch up with Drew, but the momentum he had built up on his Spiderman bike was too much and they came to his rescue just a second after he was a pile of little boy, half on the curb, half in the street. And there was ….
 
NO
 
SOUND.
 
It was dark, so I couldn’t see him, and still trying to get down the hill, I began to yell again, “is he okay???” And then I heard him cry. The cry that let me know he was not seriously injured. “Thank you, God,”  I mumbled as I made it to my sweet boy who had screamed with blood-curtling shrieks of terror as he had flown down the sidewalk.
 
With only a few scraped toes, he had survived, and it didn’t take long for the lesson to sink in. As I questioned Drew for not listening to my instruction to fall into the grass, which would have perhaps saved us from some of the drama, I realized a few things. His response was, “I couldn’t hear you.” And he couldn’t because he was screaming in terror. His own fear actually prevented him from hearing the instruction that could have saved him from the whole experience. And next, he wasn’t trained. I knew I had never told him to fall into the grass if he couldn’t stop. I wondered why he didn’t use his brakes more, but he’s only been riding since this spring, really, so I knew  he was just inexperienced.
 
Clearly, there is an age when we can know that they know when  to brake so that they don’t go too fast and crash, and it’s obviously NOT at age four. Surely, there is a time when we can trust that we’ve done our jobs and recited with our children the rule that states, “when you’re about to fall, choose the softer landing…” Hopefully, the time comes when, as parents, we can be confident that we have trained them up in the way they should go, and that God is with them, that He will protect them, and that we can trust Him, and that our prayers are effective on behalf of our children.
 
God will show us as mothers, how to guide our children, how to train them. He will show us how and when we can and should begin to trust that they’re ready to fly on their own. Walking alongside, and even behind our children (in observation), God will show us where we need to place special attention to help prepare each of our children as individuals, so that when it’s time, they are fully equipped to go and do His work and His will.
 
Thank You, God, for this reminder. I couldn’t do this on my own.
 
Be sure to visit Brandy at The Marathon Mom!