On raising heroes + ending worry

I have three little boys under my roof and I find that there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t find myself doing whatever I can to shield them from danger.

It’s a mother’s job, after all.

But yesterday I found once again that my efforts are feeble at best in trying to provide an adequate protection. And if my hope lies within my ability to shield them from the looming dangers and a difficult life my life will be a failure.

Today in our “Thanksgiving School”, as the boys have come to call it, we read a beautiful story of Squanto by Eric Metaxas (A good read, I’d say, on any day of the year!).

As I turned pages and read words on a boys life that was more difficult than perhaps my worst imaginings of my own three boys, my heart was stirred to remember - difficulty has the ability to lead to greatness.

There are no heroes who have not conquered great hardships.

I do my boys no service by praying and wishing for easy lives.

To live in adversity is to have open door to greater opportunity.

To know the taste of trials and suffering is to gain a deeper knowledge of the God of all comfort.

And there around our kitchen table we opened the discussion. How did Squanto’s hardships workout to be a part of a master plan far beyond what he could see in his sadness and despair?

One of my boys chimed in excitedly and laid it all before us - the sovereign hand of God.

We chatted of how we can’t see it when we’re stuck in the middle —it’s the greater view that only God possesses.

So, to walk the higher road requires a literal clinging to what is true in the midst of what seems to prove the opposite is true.

I’m not good at this. I have not been good at this just this week.

Perhaps as a mother, I can pray instead that they have courage to meet the trials, strength to hold fast the faith in the midst of temptations and adversity.

Perhaps I can instead keep them close to the stories of those who suffered well —those who had pain and saw it turned into beauty.

If my boys are instilled and covered in this way, they will be more prepared than if I give every effort to shield them from inevitable danger.

It is when I place my trust outside of myself into the one who formed their hearst and wrote each and every one of their days yet to be lived in His very own book that I can begin to breath deep and taste true peace.

We are those who equip, not those who make easy roads.

We are those who prepare for inevitable dangers, not those who shield them from knowing what could be their future.

May we take our calling as mothers to be a sacred gift and invest our time into preparation for greatness instead of living in anxious toil and fear.