A little over a week ago, I wrote this post about not letting fear rule your parenting. The next day, I got a phone call from my 14-year-old daughter in Ecuador saying her throat felt like it did when she had an abscess in it.
If you want to know fear, send your child to a foreign country and have her call you and tell you she’s sick and needs medical treatment. She got to spend part of her day in an Ecuadorian hospital and ended up on the first flight home, cutting her trip short.
After writing that blog post about not letting fear rule your parenting, I was confronted with a situation that made me wonder whether that was the right tactic to take. If I’d just kept my daughter home, she would have been here when she got sick again. I wouldn’t have spent 24 hours wondering if she was going to be OK. I would have had her right here where I could check on her. All of those thoughts went through this mom’s very worried mind last Tuesday morning.
But do you know what one of my daughter’s first questions was? She asked me if she could go back to Ecuador next summer. Despite not feeling good and being scared and sick in an Ecuadorian hospital, she couldn’t wait to go back. The experiences she had, the friends she made and the joy she found while in Ecuador for a week ministering to others far outweighed the crumminess of getting sick and having to come home early.
I know that God wanted my daughter on that mission trip. He’s given her a huge heart full of love and compassion along with a fearless spirit that revels in new experiences. He wanted her to have a taste of what that looks like on the mission field.
But Satan did not. There’s nothing Satan wants more than for us to hide behind our fear to keep us from doing what God asks of us. Satan would have loved for fear to have kept me from putting my daughter on that plane. He would love for fear to keep me from letting her go again.
But even though this experience was gut-wrenching for me as a mom, even though her trip didn’t end like anyone had planned, God still triumphed because we didn’t let fear hold us back. My daughter should be good as new soon (she’s having her tonsils taken out on Aug. 31), and she’s already started working to earn money to go back to Ecuador next year. She had an amazing experience in Ecuador that will change her life forever. She has the best opening line of a “What I did this summer” essay that I’ve ever heard (I started my summer in an American hospital and ended it in an Ecuadorian one). And I was stretched as a mom to let go of my fear and trust God with this child of my heart more than I ever have before.
I was reminded once again of something I learned when my kids were very young. They are not mine. They are God’s. I just get to be in charge of them for a little while. My biggest job as a mom is not to get in the way of what God wants to do in their lives. And when I do take steps to allow God to work, I have to be ready for Satan to attack because he doesn’t want me or my kids growing in our faith and confidence in God. He wants fear and worry to hold us back.
Won’t you join with me in not allowing Satan to have that kind of power over us and our kids? As our kids head back to school, let’s be parents who choose to let our children walk in the path that God has laid out for them — even when it means we have to set aside our own fear and worry.