When your time as a parent feels like it’s running short.
I’m watching several friends celebrate a significant moment in their parenting story: their oldest child graduating from high school. Their seniors have done all of their last things:
Competed in the final game, match or meet.
Dressed up for the final dance.
Took the last finals and submitted the last paper.
Sang or played the instrument in the final concert.
High five friends down the high school hallways one last time.
Hugged and thanked their favorite teacher or coach.
My friends are watching the child who gave them the name “mom” turn towards adulthood with their final summer at home before they move to college. For the first time, their child is preparing to live out from under the safety net of the family home.
The Parenting marathon
In my own parenting journey, I’m still a few years from these Senior moments. Our family is turning a new corner into the high school years. I’ve found myself reflecting on the limited time that I have left before I find myself wearing the same shoes as my Senior mom friends. Our oldest daughter will start high school in the fall and just a year behind her, in 8th grade, is our youngest daughter. In five years, both of our girls will be off on their own college adventures. Five years ago, they were finishing 2nd and 3rd grade and five years from now, they will have completed 12th grade. Five years ago, I thought I had all the time in the world to raise those sweet, little girls and today, I’m watching the days slip into months as they transform into young women right before my eyes!
It feels like we’re entering the final training of the parenting marathon. When the big race day is still a ways away but the training schedule is getting more intense, requiring more commitment from you, and you’ve been questioning if you’ll hit all those long runs before the 26.2 race day. In the same way, I feel time is running short. My daughters emotional needs are increasing in intensity. I’m more invested in this significant race than ever. And my mind races with all the questions!
What have I already taught them?
What are they learning from us?
Can they name the core values of our family?
Do they know how God sees them?
Do they believe that they are made in the image of God?
Do they feel known by the One who created them?
Am I praying over them enough?
Are they growing, maturing, and transforming as a daughter of God?
Is home a safe space they can always return to when the world is wearing them down?
What is still missing that I want them to know before my position of influence changes?
A sense of true identity
At the core of each of these questions is my deep desire for them to embrace their identity. The hope that uncovering their true identity would be a foundation that they can build their life on. I immediately find myself returning to the passage of scripture that has been foundational in my own journey of identity. The passage that assures me that I am seen, known and loved by God.
Psalm 139.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. (1-4)
Psalm 139 is one of David’s poetic writings that reminds us how intimately we are known by God. That He alone knows us better than any other person could or will on this earth. He knows what we think about and what’s in our hearts. He sees us when we are all alone or when we are in the middle of a crowd. Our quirky ways and habits are familiar to Him. He knows what we are going to say before we say it.
Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? To be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you’re there! If I go underground, you’re there! If I flew on morning’s wings to the far western horizon, You’d find me in a minute-you’re ALREADY THERE WAITING! (7-9, message)
David knows that he is seen by God. There’s nowhere he can hide from the gaze of the Creator. God’s eyes are ever on David, even as they are on us. In the places that he experienced darkness, God was there. In the highest, most joy-filled moments of his life, God was there. And in the lowest, grief-saturated moments of his life, God did not abandon him. I’ve known this to be true in my own life. God celebrating with us on our wedding day. His presence in the hospital room during each of my daughter’s births. His hand on me as I wept through miscarriages. His peaceful presence as I held my dad’s hand and sang to him in his final hours of life.
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb……My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depth of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them,, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them. (13, 15-16)
He is the Artist who had a vision for who we would become while we were nothing. The Creator who formed us with gentle hands as He produced a masterpiece inside the womb of our mother. The One who marks the very second of when our life would begin and can look across the full timeline of our lives with complete understanding of our story, including the ending.
I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, my soul knows it very well. (Psalm 139: 14)
Right in the middle of this description of being crafted by the Father, David worships and rejoices with God as he recognizes that he is fearfully, wonderfully, and marvelously made. He doesn’t question if he is worthy or if the life he has lived has tainted who he is as a unique creation. David’s track record for sin is long but he doesn’t let that be a definition of who he is, as God made him. He doesn’t look over his physical body and name his flaws. No, he embraces his identity as a work of art.
Finding identity in my story
As a young college student, I often felt like I didn’t belong. Not pretty enough by the world’s standards and unsure of my own self-worth, it meant everything to me to hold fast to the words of Psalm 139. There was an ongoing joke in my family growing up that I was a surprise pregnancy to my parents. After all, I’m only 11 months younger than my brother. They didn’t exactly plan to have us that close together! But, I would sometimes hear the words “surprise” and translate that to mean “mistake” or “unwanted.” Neither of those words were true but when you are a young girl trying to find your place, you can create a narrative that seems to explain why you feel the way you do. Psalm 139 transformed my heart and mind into believing that God Himself was the true creator of my life. He dictated the timeframe of my arrival into the world and breathed His life into me before I would ever understand the depth of what it meant to have His spirit live in me.
As I head into raising my daughters through the years of high school, I want them to be immersed in God’s word. I want them to have a heart to worship the Father. I want them to know His voice and respond to what He asks of them. But I know all of that will only happen when they feel seen, known and loved by the One who created them. Psalm 139 will be one of the big rocks in their foundation of identity. I’ll continue to pray those words over them. I’ll gently remind them of these powerful truths when the lies sneak into their thought patterns. In the years ahead, when they face hardships or are worn out from the ways of the world, they’ll look to the Father who, even in darkness, surrounds them with the light of His presence.
Forming identity in their story
As a parent, where can you begin? This summer, we are asking our daughters to read Psalm 139:1-16 on the regular and to memorize a few passages each week. We want them to be saturated in the hope and truth it offers this summer. If your children are younger, you might choose just a few of the key verses to post up in their room or write on their bathroom mirror to remind them of their identity. If they aren’t able to read yet, pray an adapted version over them as you tuck them in at night:
Father, thank you for knowing (your child’s name). You see them when they are asleep and when they wake up. You surround them when they are playing and you know all the creative ways they think. They can’t hide from you, even when they mess up! You hold onto them everywhere they go. Thank you for making (your child’s name). You thought of them before they were ever in my arms. He/she is fearfully and wonderfully made, as you have said. We believe that and trust you with all of her/his days.
Whatever stage of the parenting marathon journey you are on, stay the course. May Psalm 139 be a source of encouragement that strengthens our children as they round the corner into the next season of life!