Letting go, letting God

My children are grown, out of homeschool, and pursuing their own lives. The Lord has been speaking to me for some time now about letting them go. At first my response was, “Let them go? How can I possibly be holding on? They don’t even live here anymore!” Silly me. How patiently the Lord teaches us what we need to learn, even if we are sure we don’t need to learn it.

I love my children. LOVE my children deeply and sacrificially, as do most homeschoolers. But I have come to realize that tied in with the deep and sacrificial love is a wee bit of self-centeredness. Just a wee bit.

As I was praying “Our Father” this morning (I love praying the Lord’s Prayer. Not only am I talking to God, as is always the case when we pray, He is all the sudden talking to me too. It’s like the receiver of the telephone has been fixed, and now it’s a two-way conversation, in a way prayer hasn’t been before!)

As I was praying “Our Father,” I realized that the “Our” meant my Father, and the children’s Father too. “Our Father.” If I love my children with a deep and sacrificial love, how much more does their Father which art in heaven?

You see, I love my children, but I don’t want them to suffer or hurt. I do what I can to protect them from pain. I want them, now that they are on their own and making their own choices, to choose at all times wisely so they don’t ever suffer the painful consequences of sin or foolishness. (And here is the wee bit part: it hurts to admit it, but perfect children with perfect lives reflect well on me as a parent and a Christian.)

But the Lord is a perfect Parent. His love is deeper. Truer and purer. He allows pain or trouble or suffering to touch us, if experiencing pain or trouble or suffering causes us to understand the depth of our need for Him, to learn deeper wisdom, to relinquish control of un-yielded areas of our hearts or lives.

He loves us too much to leave the fleshly, toxic, or diseased bits in us, even if the process of purifying us brings the ugly dross to the surface for the whole world to see from time to time.

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Update: continued in Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory