Like many of you, Chuck and I went through a ceremony with each of our newborns. Dedication, baptism, christening. Different words and rituals, perhaps, but these solemn moments were our humble expressions of thanks and need. We thanked God for giving us this child and we acknowledged that we desperately needed Him to be good parents. These moments were, in fact, acts of surrender. We understood it would take God to make us godly parents and thus raise up godly children. And yet.
Take a deep breath.
One of the most gripping and overwhelming emotions I see in parenting today is fear. Fear of sickness. Fear of un-coolness. Fear of being different, being picked on, or being left out. Fear of failure. Fear of lack of intelligence, beauty, popularity, or sports skill. From the need to get all “A’s” in kindergarten (let that sink in a moment), to the need to wear just the right clothes, we fear that our kids may not “be enough.”
Widen out the lens to a bigger worldview and the fear factor only increases. Fear of not having a good job, fear of not marrying well, fear of not serving God, fear of not living well “enough.” Don’t even mention world tensions and local threats. We are consumed with the what-if’s.
We find ourselves living in The Land of Unknowns. From the child’s first night alone in the crib to the first day of school; from the first time driving behind the wheel to the first day at college; from the first kiss to walking down the aisle, we are forced into situation after situation where we have no control.
