Throughout every new season of parenting I have felt inadequate for the task. In the newborn years of sleepless nights and endless days. Through the toddler years where every moment is spent trying to keep your inquisitive toddler alive. When children are poorly or sad or you are poorly or sad, the task of parenting our children well can seem overwhelming at times.
I'm now just entering the tweenager (pre-teens) years and yet again I feel at a total loss as to how to best nurture this precious child God has given me.
I often think of Hannah, Samuel's mum – an incredible woman whose trust in God with her entire life and the life of her son is just so incredible. Here is a lady who cried out to God with such desperation for a child, carrying a grief so painful that even Eli the priest thought she had had a few too many drinks. And yet the book of 1 Samuel tells us that once Hannah had poured out her heart to God, she went away and her face was no longer downcast. Such was Hannah's trust in a God who hears our prayers. Such was Hannah's surrender to the will of God.
I've had a couple of moments in the last few weeks where I have felt out of my depth and helpless to know how to love my kids well. In these moments I will take it to God in prayer but my tendency is to continue to linger in my anxious thoughts – as if those anxious thoughts have any power to change the situation.
I love how Hannah gives us this beautiful model of taking our most painful things to God and leaving them there at his feet, totally trusting God with the things most precious to her. By doing this she is not minimising her struggle but surrendering all before her most wonderful counsellor. Our counsellor Christ is not just the best qualified, most experienced therapist one could ever talk to. He is goodness itself, love itself, kindness itself. He always has his door open to us and is completely trustworthy.
When we go to God in prayer, we are going to a God who is perfectly able to meet our needs. So if we are putting our trust in God, we can know that in all things God is working for our good.
Hannah continues to amaze me in the way that after she has weaned her most precious child she hands him over to the service of the Lord in the temple. Everyone knew that Eli's sons were wicked, so when Hannah hands over her son into his care she must have known that, so far, he did did not have the best track record in parenting. And yet Hannah does it. She is not trusting the care of Eli, she is trusting the care of God.
Sometimes when I think about how inadequate I feel as a parent, I remember that God decided in all his wisdom to give me my precious kids. God gave me and my husband the responsibility of nurturing our kids and teaching them that the best way to live is to live under his loving rule. And so, although I want to take that responsibility seriously and do all I can to love my kids well, the most loving thing I can do is to teach them that it is God who is the perfect parent, not me. It is God who will meet all their needs, not me. It is God who is perfect in his love and care of them, not me.
What freedom it is to know that as we place our children in the care of God, through prayer, we place them in the very best possible hands.
Lizzie Bassford is a wife, mum and missionary living in inner-city Manchester. Follow her on Twitter @captivated01.
