Big Kids, Big Prayers

Little kids, little problems…big kids, big problems?

When I was a young parent of three kids born in the span of 36 months, a few people passed this bit of homespun wisdom on to me. I suppose they were trying to give me a heads’ up that toilet training and chicken pox and tantrums (theirs, and yeah, occasionally mine) were relatively simple problems compared the challenges moms and dads faced at adolescence and beyond. But those “little problems” weren’t small to me. I’d never before parented a teething baby, or had a toddler melt down in the cereal aisle. I was learning to crawl, then walk in my role as a mother, with each child’s age and stage.

As those little kids turned into big ones, the challenges became more complex, of course. But at every stage, I have felt just as much of a learner on the first day of motherhood. Each of our adult children are facing challenges including financial, emotional and spiritual battles, and, in the case of our oldest, a recent diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. I’ve never been the mother of these 27, 28 and 30 year-old adults before. I am still learning to crawl.

It occurs to me that perhaps that’s just where God wants me: on my knees. From this posture, I am most able to relearn at this stage, on this day, the most important parenting lesson of all.

My children belong to him.