Late one night after I’d gone to bed, I received a text from my son. He rarely texted or called that late.
Late night texts and phone calls tend to make my heart jump from peace to panic.
As a mother of young adults who usually live far away, I never put my phone on silent, even at night. In so many ways, life was simpler when all my baby birds lived in my nest and the feathers of my momma wings easily covered them all.
Over the last few PCSs, we’ve moved away with one fewer kids than when we had arrived. A surcharge for having lots of kids close together in age.
What they don’t tell you when your little fledglings give their wings a try and start flying away is how your own wings will ache to cover them again. How quiet your nest will be. How much more threatening the dark corners of the big, wide world seem. How motherhood will shift and stretch beyond what you thought possible.
How much more you are forced to rely on how wide, long, high, and deep God’s love is for you and for your big kids.
How big his wings must be.
One of the great joys of parenting big kids is seeing God’s faithfulness in their lives and watching their own faith in Him deepen. They’ve been practicing their whole lives as we all do our best to trust God with the cross-country moves, the lonely deployments, the stress and trauma of proximity to war, and the many hellos and goodbyes this military life requires.
My son’s text was a question about some college paperwork, easily answered and not worth the elevated heart rate it caused.
If you are noticing that your heart is on high alert and that fear is too easily accesible, I want you to know that God sees you. He invites you to nestle in close and let His wings cover you. I, too, am training my heart to choose peace over panic, because Oh, how He loves you and me!
And when tough times come, and they always will, may we see our circmstances through the lens of God’s great, immeasurable love for us and for the ones we love so dearly. They are not too far away for His wings to reach.
“He will cover you will his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge” (Psalm 91:4a).