Sydney asked me to write a blog post about what it’s like for me as a parent to send her out on this trip. I will do my best, but I have little wisdom in this area!
I heard it said once, that having a child is to forever have your heart walking around outside your body. I understood that the moment Sydney was born. So impossibly tiny, so impossibly fragile, so impossibly…mine! The primal urge to protect her washed over me in waves of hormone induced insanity and I knew it was true; a mother would do anything to protect her child. And that was easy…for a little while. We had the newest and safest car seat on the market. We never put her to sleep on her stomach. We had every cupboard and toiletseat locked down like Fort Knox! But then, she grew up. And new dangers surfaced. Could she ride with that mom I didn’t know? Could she spend the night at a friend’s house? Could she get her driver’s license? Could she – GASP—TRAVEL THE WORLD FOR 9 MONTHS?! The answer to all those questions and so many more was yes. I had to let go (easier said than done), I had to let her grow up and figure out who she was and who she wanted to be. I had to let her make mistakes and learn from them. And when it came time to decide what was after high school, and she approached us with the World Race, we had to say yes to that too.
I could write a book about Sydney Grace. I could detail all the ways her father and I always knew she was made for leaving. So many little antidotes in her life leading up to this moment! But this is a blog not a book, (she probably should have given me a word limit!) so all I can tell you is that even as a little girl, one of her first questions every day was, “Where are we going today?” She was never content to sit at home, there always had to be an outing; an adventure. So it should have come as no surprise to me that she was ready for this adventure. In Isaiah 6:8 as he was being commissioned for service it says, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” Our sweet Gracie has answered that call and I am in no position to argue it. After all, isn’t that what I’ve prayed all these years? That she would grow to be a woman who was a friend of God? That she would grow to be a woman who put herself second and others first? How now, then, could I tell her no? How could I not support her? People ask me if I am worried. The answer is…of course I am! My natural tendency is to worry. I worry she could get sick, or hurt. I worry the world is a cruel place and she’ll fall victim to that. I worry about all sorts of things I have to make up because I don’t even know what to worry over! But then I am reminded, God has her. He has her good in mind, He has her life plan in mind. Jesus Christ has her heart and her soul, and she loves Him and is willing to serve him, and that trumps it all. When I worry, I turn to Him and give it to Him, and He sends peace to me in that way that only our sovereign God can do.
Unfortunately, I have no great wisdom for parents unsure about their children leaving on this trip. In the end, I had to come to terms with the fact that her father and I, with God’s abundant grace, had raised a smart, godly, independent woman who was going to make her own way in the world. It is bittersweet for me because I will miss her like crazy, but I pray that though she is far from me, this trip leads her closer to her Lord and savior. I am praying this trip teaches her about who she is in Christ, and what He has for her in the future. I am praying that seeing other believers around the world strengthens her own faith in new and indescribable ways. I am praying she has adventures that feed her soul and lead her to a deeper understanding of the way God made her.
By the way, lest you all think I am so grown up about this, you should know, I cry almost daily and at the most random times about her leaving. But, I have invested in waterproof mascara so no one knows I am a wreck, and downloaded WhatsApp so I can mother her from a distance!
