Published July, 2000
Like most parents, my husband and I used to look forward to the summer. It was our Space In-Between. I was a classroom teacher, and my husband directed a summer camp. We were just as excited as our kids.
Three whole months stretched out before us, a vast expanse of special time In-Between where we could enjoy cool pine tree forests, take special interest classes with no report cards, and linger late in the evening with the kids over a Scrabble game.
We enjoyed the summer as a family. It was a pause in life, a time to catch our collective breaths. Best of all, this was a time to anticipate renewal. The coming school year shone brightly ahead, and we all made plans for September when we would be able to start with a clean slate.
But this year…this Space In-Between…it seems to stretch out with no end in sight. Our youngest child has his high school diploma in hand. He is enrolled in a college 2,000 miles away, and as I walk by his room this summer, I keep wondering what it will look like after he takes out his clothes and all his favorite possessions.
Yet, it’s not really the things I see changing before my eyes that make this Space loom so large and vast ahead of me. It’s the things unseen, the questions that keep popping into my head for which there are no answers. How did we do as parents? How will he fare in the real world? And, biggest of all, who will be his god?
This is a time when a parent sets all the worries of a lifetime out on the table, and we start worrying about the worries. Did I spend too much time wondering if his teeth needed braces? Given a choice between losing his winter jacket and losing his faith, did I really have the right focus?
Justin assures me he will look for a church close to campus, and I know his college encourages students to stay in their faith. He professes a belief in God and in Jesus, but are there any little questions, small seeds of doubt that will bloom in the coming culture of college where kids are pushed to challenge tradition?
I come by these fears honestly. My husband and I, for separate reasons, lived a secular life for forty years. We were happy in our ignorance, until we met our supreme challenge of life. We quickly learned how little help our pride and self-satisfaction offered us when we fail to acknowledge God. Jesus literally saved us. He literally showed us the Way.
We have done our best as parents to be transparent with our children, to share our faith walk, and to encourage them to follow. But this is a pretty radical change for children in their teens as they witness their parents reaching out for God who was never welcomed in the home before. I know well the life of doubt, of self, and of wandering. Did we come to Jesus soon enough to share the power of His transforming love with our children?
Early in the summer I asked my son, “What do you think about going to buy a Bible of your own choosing? Would you like to pick out a Bible that has just the right type of notes and translation to help you read on your own in college?”
My heart did a somersault when he told me, “Sure. I’ve been thinking about that myself.”
Yesterday we went to the Christian bookstore. As I left him to make his choice, unfettered by motherly coaching, I walked down aisles of children’s books. Pictures of happy Veggies and pop-up books sharing the Christmas story renewed regrets that my husband and I had missed sharing the joy of Jesus with our children when they were young. Like a patient hurrying to get her flu shot at the last minute, I wanted to drag Justin from the Bibles over to this aisle and read him bedtime stories on the floor in the bookstore.
Lunacy? Of course. But desperation calls for desperate measures. The Space In-Between this summer is filled with so many possibilities, and I can no longer see to the end of the Space anymore, when classes would normally resume at the grade school and we’d all be tucked safely away into a life that’s close and comfortable.
I placed the pop-up books back on the shelf just as my son came round the aisle with his brand new Bible in hand, unsoiled, and protected in a tight plastic wrapper. As much as I wanted to know this new Bible would keep him in the safety of faith in Jesus and be my Mother’s guarantee, I finally saw the truth.
The Space In-Between now belongs to Justin. I can no longer engineer his life, getting him up in time for church and thanking him for saying grace at the table. I can ask him, from a distance, how his faith is coming…if he gets time to read his Bible. But only from afar.
I now understand the sense of urgency Paul must have felt, writing to his Christian disciples in Ephesus. What joy must have filled his heart when he received news from Timothy, evidence of the Thessalonians’ continued faith. And in Paul’s heart I see the glimmer of a new heart I must develop as a mom. “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” [Eph 1:17 NIV]
Love continues. Prayer continues. And my own faith continues. My children can still witness the love of Jesus, the power of God in our lives. But only as my husband and I perfect our own faith–perfect it in humility, confession, repentance, service, compassion, and love.
It would be easier to go backwards, to worry about our young children paying attention in Sunday school. Of course, I can still worry about our children at college, even from afar. But Jesus leads me in the more difficult Way, the life of witness through example.
Maybe the more important questions for Justin when he calls home will be when he asks me, “How’s your faith, Mom? Do you still read your Bible in the morning? Do you pray for me each day like you promised?”
The Space still looms ahead, a vast unknown. I have to let God have His own way with my children. The comfort I have comes, as it always does, from submitting in prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” [Mat 6:9 NIV] And I let go.