So about this crying thing.  I don’t do much of it.  I live with very few tears (unless I’m in the kitchen chopping onions). But I cried a while back and here’s what happened.

A friend prayed for my children.  Out loud.  With me.  Not just, “God, help Beth’s children.”  But actually mentioned their names and stuff they’re going through. She put tenderness into her prayer so that I could hear.

And so I cried. Which I rarely do.

Any one else?  When other people love on your children, do you get all drippy too?

Why do I cry about kid stuff? What is it about my relationship with them that produces tears from eyes that are usually desert dry? Why do I miss them so terribly even when I am happy for where they are in life? And why is all this still true even now in their productive adult years?

My 2013 cancer didn’t scare me so much as it scared me for my children.  I didn’t want them to go through having a mother with cancer.  I didn’t want that struggle for them. I always played by the rule of a mama protects her kids from bad things. But God met them in that bad when I couldn’t meet them there.  I was completely focused on my effort to get well. I couldn’t “help” them.

Even so, they grew in ways that were not possible on the healthy side of the line connecting parent and child.

So what do I learn in this?  I am convinced that as their parent, I will be tied all my days to their happiness and despair. They aren’t called apron strings for no reason. But understanding that God’s love for them is intertwined in all their future good and bad leaves me with an audible sigh that sounds a lot like relief.  It compels me to untie my apron and leave the kitchen. He goes before and beckons them to draw near.  I may or may not be there to rejoice or cry with them, but my confidence is in God not me or them.

I have been watching from afar a young mother with children step very near the edge of eternity in her battle with cancer.  She has decided to prepare her children for her earthly absence by teaching them to find God on their own. Without her. She knows that the greatest lesson is knowledge that the absence of an earthly parent will never mean the absence of their heavenly Parent.

And so…back to my friend’s prayer for my children. Those tears were tender, not desperate. Thankful, not afraid.

Happily ever after, beth