Remind Me Whose They Are

My children have entered the age of freedom and independence . . . or at least that’s where they think they’ve arrived. At 15, almost 14, and 10, we’re riding into all the double digits of tweens and teens. Everyone is starting to think for themselves, and I’m not so sure how I feel about it. Gone are the days of wide-eyed acceptance of every truth we utter; now our kids take most of our commands as recommended operating instructions in a manual they’re not all that interested in reading.

These days, I spend the fraction of time I have with them listening to their hearts and giving welcome and unwelcome advice, holding on loosely to whatever control and influence I might still have in their lives. While they walk the halls of their schools and walk home in the afternoon, while they mingle in other people’s driveways and spend hours behind closed doors on phones with friends, I find myself removed from the center of their ruminations and wonderings.

It’s a common and natural shift. While parents remain important influencers in a child’s life, peers often take over the lead as teens begin the hard work of figuring out who they are and what they believe, in contrast to or in harmony with the beliefs they’ve been handed. I can almost put a pin on the date this shift happened for me in eighth grade when I turned to my cousin for advice about something that happened with a boy instead of turning to my mom. Throughout most of high school, I confided in my friends first and my mom later, only after working out how I felt and what I thought with my friends.

Knowing this doesn’t make parenting teens any easier. Knowing this doesn’t make me want to loosen the reins.

There’s never been a time in my children’s lives when I have relied more on prayer than now, when so much more is out of my control than ever before. Before, there were many things I could do to protect my children from harm: Walk between the street and their small bodies. Strap their tiny frames into car seats. Enclose their small skulls inside helmets. Choose their friend groups and play dates. For quite a while, I could trick myself into believing that my children’s safety was within my control. But now?

Now, they have hormones. They have anxiety and depression. They have bullies. They have hurt and traumatized peers who are becoming teens themselves, navigating their own wreckage. They are navigating questions about their vocational identity and their sexual identity and their identities in Christ. They have uncertainty about the world and its increasing complexities and injustices. They encounter so many of these complexities outside of our home, and there’s only so much we can do to help influence what happens out there.

When I am alone in my house, safe and wondering about and worrying over the safety of my children—what temptations they are facing, what doubts, what questions, what battles—there is only so much I can do, really, besides love them and be available for them. But there is one thing I can do, and I find myself doing it fiercely, constantly, pretty darn near desperately. I turn worry into prayer.

In response to my fretting, I hear Jesus’ words, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” (Luke 12:25 NIV). Likewise, who by worrying can add a single hour to their children’s lives? Daily I find myself in conversation with the Holy Spirit. Parenting teenagers feels to me like riding an indoor roller coaster in the pitch black—I never seem to know whether we’re in for another stomach-clenching flip or blood-rushing plummet or slow, creeping climb up another hill. The only thing I can do is hang on, and pray.

Jesus taught His disciples to pray for daily bread. Jesus taught His disciples to ask God for help resisting temptations. Jesus taught His disciples to pray to be delivered from the Evil One (Luke 11:2–4 NIV). For every one of my spiking fears and anxieties about what might be happening in my child’s life this moment, there’s a steadying internal prayer, “Holy Spirit, be with them. Abide in them. Comfort them. Remind them who they are. Remind them whose they are.” For every moment I’m unsure how to connect or whether to knock on the closed door to their room, there’s a moment to pause and pray for wisdom, the need to be still and listen for the Holy Spirit’s nudging.

When I feel that sudden surge of worry about my kids or sudden nudge of concern from the Holy Spirit, I pray for their protection. I pray for their deliverance. I pray for self-control and kindness and joy to overwhelm the temptations and meanness and depression that can dominate their lives at this age. I picture a legion of angels summoned and released against the powers of darkness and then I pray more, that their hearts are soft enough to be pierced again by the renewing love of Christ.

Soren Kierkegaard said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” I think about this often when I pray for my children. It seems silly to ask God to protect my children, as if God isn’t in the business of loving and caring for my children already. So why pray for them so fervently?

It isn’t a question of God’s faithfulness and love for them. It is my daily reminder to trust God to be with my children on their journeys.

I might be saying, “Holy Spirit, be with them. Abide in them. Comfort them. Remind them who they are. Remind them whose they are,” but what I’m really praying is, “Holy Spirit, be with me. Remind me that You are with them. Remind me that You abide in them. Remind me that You comfort them. Remind me who You are. Remind me whose they are.” It is a prayer that the God who is with them out there will keep me attuned to the needs of my children when they come home, so I ask the right questions, provide a safe space for their doubts, and make our home one in which they know they are always loved. Rework me out of the mother they needed yesterday and mold me into the mother they need today.

Never before have I worried so much over my children as I do now, when they have so much more freedom, when they are realizing their own free will, when they are on the cusp of adulthood, being shaped by and shaping their world. I need peace for this stage of their journey. Jesus promised His disciples, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7 NIV). So, daily I ask. Daily I seek. Daily I knock. Give me assurance of your love. Give me peace for the journey. Be with me, be with me, be with me.

—Written by Sarah Wells. Used by permission of the author. Click here to connect with Sarah.