I’m a pretty sentimental person. When my children were born, I would think forward to the time when they would be grown with one part relief and three parts sadness. Knowing they would be out of our home and daily care “someday” motivated me to persevere through late nights, snotty noses, and sassy attitudes. Now that my husband and I are empty nesters and “someday” is here, I see that my end-of-game fantasy scenario lacked a key feature: worries and concerns.
Worry Does Not End When Children Grow Up
One of the hardest things to deal with in parenting is the realization that, just as things go wrong for adults, things can also go wrong for our children. As they grow, our ability to do anything tangible to help them shrinks.
I guess I thought that once they were adults, I wouldn’t be plagued with doubts or fears about their safety or success. I imagined their problems would be insignificant because my husband and I were such good parents. We fed them well. We guided and taught them far more than we shamed them. We took them to church. We prayed fervently. Thankfully, they both chose Jesus in their elementary years. With their salvations secure, what could possibly be left to worry about?
I’m not saying that I sit around worrying terribly about our kids, but I am surprised by how much they still need our support of every kind. I’m also surprised by how complex the world has become for them. The issues they are navigating are nothing like what we went through at their ages. I’m equally impressed by their hard work and good character. But I still get worried, sometimes terribly.
Even though they are grown, I still worry that they will die. Given that 100% of people will die, and having had close calls with one multiple times and the other once, I know the risk is real. I worry that my children will not find their special person and will miss out on all that a good partnership has to offer. Even though they professed faith in Jesus as children and their salvations are secure, I probably worry most about their spiritual development. My husband and I did a lot to expose our children to the love of Jesus and to the Bible, and we went to church every Sunday. Of course, that is a given when your father is the pastor. I’ve had to accept that my children’s faith journeys, their desire to read the Bible daily, and whether they attend church every Sunday are matters I cannot control.
Anxiety Is a Signal
Anxiety is a normal emotion. I know this well as a licensed mental health counselor. Much like the frequent feeling that you need to use the bathroom, we need not be distressed simply because we are having a normal emotion. We know what that physical signal is telling us to do. Experience has taught us neither to panic nor to ignore it. It would be silly to be angry with ourselves for feeling the urge.
Anxiety is like that: a signal telling us something. It tells us that we are concerned something bad might happen. And nearly always, we are right that an unpleasant outcome is possible. We live in a broken world, so we need a good way to work through this feeling.
Take Reasonable Action, Then Make Room for Faith
The way to work through anxiety is to acknowledge what we are worried may happen and then do reasonable things to prevent it or lessen the impact of the forecasted negative event. If I’m worried about being able to pay my bills, I find a job. If I am worried my child won’t know Jesus, I model Him in my behavior and attitude. If I’m worried my child will die in a car wreck, I pray. But I cannot hold them hostage in the basement, because then I would have worries of a different kind.
After I take reasonable action to prevent what I imagine might go wrong, there will still be some worry. There is always room for worry. That’s life. That space must be filled with faith: faith in God that He will provide, faith that your child can grow, faith in yourself that you can learn new things, and faith that you have survived hard things and could do it again.
To support yourself and grow in faith, I encourage you to put yourself in a faith-supportive community, such as a healthy local church. Attend a service, small group, or Bible study, and learn about this God who loves you so. He loves your kids more than you love them. He is more concerned for them than you are.
One of my spiritual practices is to pray for my kids. Sometimes it is hard to know exactly what to pray. I have found that using a simple prayer for each of my loved ones helps. The prayer I wrote is free for your use: download the Warrior’s Prayer.
