Stewarding what we have: Children

I have occasionally written about stewarding what we have and have always considered financial resources. But recently our daughter had another asthma attack that got so bad so quickly, I really feared for her life. It was a complete wide-eyed-mom moment at the medical check-in counter with a "Dear Jesus help them help my baby." She's fine now, but the incident brought me face to face with the mortality of our children.

As I've documented on this blog, I was slow to warm up to being a mom, but two years in, I'm all in. I am in the guts of mother-child relationships. Bowels might be more appropriate since this week we're back to potty training. This stage of parenting is so physical. There's a lot of hands on wrangling which inhibits abstraction. The diaper is wet or it's not. The spit up stinks or it doesn't. The plate of food is going in the stomach or on the floor or in the hair. Tickles result in full throttle laughter. Items are banged, slammed, and torn. I think this close physicality made me forget how thin the line between life and death is.

Being awakened to that reminds me that whether I spend a few more days and weeks with my kids or decades, their whole existence from before time into eternity is wrapped in the hands of God. In our overlapping time, however long that may be, I've been entrusted to take care of them as beloved children of God. On the one hand, this means that we've a much higher calling than to make sure they stay alive and learn not to be embarrassments to the family. And on the other hand, this means that God is particularly interested in each of them and active in their care and nurture so we don't have to bear the burden in our own strength and wisdom.

So the first step in parenting toward the cross is to remember that God is the ultimate creator and designer of these little lives. It's not about us creating our own little kingdom and our own family name. It's about realizing that like money, our children have been entrusted to our care for a short while.