Earthquakes, Aftershocks, and Choosing to Trust
@bethvogt
I didn’t sleep last Friday.
I stayed up all night long – by choice. It wasn’t all that difficult, considering I was in Colorado and my youngest daughter, Christa, was in California where there’d been not one, but two record-breaking earthquakes in a little over 24 hours. And let’s not consider the I-lost-cost-of-how-many aftershocks.
I know staying awake all night – a case of self-induced insomnia – didn’t keep my daughter any safer than she already was. Or wasn’t. And I wasn’t playing God by pulling an all-nighter. Or doubting God. I know what God is capable of … and what I’m not capable of.
And I also recalled the conversation I’ve had with my friend Wise Guy about God’s definition of safety being different than our definition of safety because, well, bad things happen, right?
And that’s another blog post.
And yes, even with that whole safety definition discrepancy, I choose to trust God.
But still. There was no sleeping for me last Friday night.
It’s an odd thing, this mom-gig. And it’s all the more unusual because I’m approaching a time of monumental change as a mom – an emotional seismic shift, you might say. In a few short weeks, there are going to be more nights when Christa is away from home at the end of the day than she is tucked in her bed right down the hall from me and her dad.
Not that there’s any “tucking in” going on in recent years. That’s just a mom turn of phrase.
And no, I won’t be sitting up all night once Christa’s off in Minnesota at college. I won’t be imagining that my “Mom Night Watch” somehow makes the world a safer place for her.
That’s not how life works.
Being a mom means we hug our child one-last-time-until-the-next-time and we let them go. We release our child into their future knowing the world’s not a safe place. Things happen, like earthquakes and aftershocks. And sometimes, our child sleeps through the upheaval. And sometimes we do, too. And sometimes, nobody does.
Sending a child off to college is another opportunity to be brave. Brave enough to believe in our child enough to let them go. And brave enough to believe in ourselves so that we can watch them, eyes wide open, as they walk away into the lives waiting for them. The calm days and the earthquake days.
And then we choose to say our prayers, to trust, and to go to bed at night, close our eyes, and go to sleep. And we choose to do it all over again the next day and the next, until it feels normal.
Earthquakes, Aftershocks, and Choosing to Trust http://bit.ly/2S50SnB #parenting #perspective
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'Having faith doesn't mean I have all the answers. It means trusting God especially in the midst of uncertainty.' Quote by @LysaTerKeurst #trust #faith
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