Even Stronger than a Mother’s Love

By Jessica Brodie

Has it happened to you—a colossal life change crept up on you, something you knew was coming, yet seemed to happen so fast you now feel shell-shocked and stunned?

My oldest child has left home, off to college.

It’s a good thing, this change. A new chapter, an adventure, a right and natural step in his growth. And because I knew it was coming, I took steps to ease this transition—helped him pack and bought him what he’d need, spent the summer talking with and savoring quality time with him, prayed and spiritually surrendered as I tried to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the change.

Yet now it’s here. And it feels so …

Odd. Quiet. Lonely. Empty. It happened so fast.

Like before I birthed him, when my womb and my arms were devoid of child and I longed for him. Longed for a child. Longed for what I couldn’t even imagine, yet somehow knew waited just up ahead.

It’s been so long since I felt this way that I almost forgot how it was.

Now I remember.

I’m not alone. My husband and three younger kids are here, as well as my extended family, my work, my church, my community. And I know in my heart this is just how I feel today. With time, it will be my new normal, this home without my son. Life will move on as it always does, and I’ll adjust. After all, how exciting! I had the blessed opportunity to birth, raise, and then celebrate with my child as I sent him off into the world. He’s a good guy, a smart and faithful young man with a kind and compassionate heart, a sharp mind, and a poetic soul. I’ve done my job—raised him to know the Lord, raised him to be a responsible and productive and thoughtful member of society who will make the world a better place as he uses his God-given gifts and shines the light of the Lord wherever he goes.

Yet I ache for him, my baby now grown. Even as I know, deep within, that time has now passed.

Here’s the truth, we parents, and it’s a truth I know like I know my own body: We’re given a gift with our children, but they’re not actually “ours.” Our children, just like anything else we believe we “have” (money, spouse, property, etc.), don’t actually belong to us. They belong to God. We are merely stewards, managers on God’s behalf.

Some of what we “have” are things of the world, temporary things that will eventually crumble into dust with the passage of time. But the lasting things, the other souls we so desperately love, are eternal. And those belong to God, not me. Never me.

As much as I love my son, my spouse, my other precious children, my friends and family and others around me, I must remember God loves us all so much more.

In Jeremiah 1:5, God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (NIV).

God knows us intimately, knew and loved us even before our conception and birth, which happened with his design.

And he loves us even more than our parents love us. Imagine this!

As he says in Isaiah 49:15-18:

“‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. Your children hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you. Lift up your eyes and look around; all your children gather and come to you. As surely as I live,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride.’”

In Psalm 139:13-16, the psalmist praises the Lord for this deep, intimate, soul knowledge, sharing:

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

As much as I miss my son—who I longed for and finally birthed and raised and love beyond measure—I need to remember God loves him more than I do, even though I cannot possibly comprehend it.

I imagine God pines for us when we “leave home,” too. When we stray from our faith, or walk apart from him for a time, his heart must break with longing for us. Perhaps that’s why the picture of the prodigal son and his father from Luke 15:11-32 is so powerful—the way the father races for him with pure, joyful, unadulterated love.

My son is no prodigal, but I race for him in just the same way.

God races for us all in that way, too.

So today I pause, even as I miss my child-turned-man, and celebrate him. It’s OK to miss him and even long for him, but I also surrender him—to God, and to the beautiful plans my Heavenly Father has for him.

God’s plans are far better than my own. Amen and amen.

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