A Grip So Tight

I stop and just watch the children around our table.  School books are open and minds are absorbing and processing information.  I just have to stop and look a each one, to soak in who they are.  Today.  Today will go quickly and this day I won't get back.  I need to remind myself over and over again that these precious little ones are just on loan from God.  I want to claim them as mine, hold on so tight and never let them go.  In the process of seizing every moment with them, I find myself slipping into despair.  I want to be selfish and keep them under my wing forever.  The thought of them, the very thought, leaving our home and venturing out into the world makes me sick to my stomach.  I know that they will eventually leave and spread their own wings, I know this.  But some days I just like to pretend that the reality was just a dream.

The weight I feel raising children to love the Lord is overwhelming.  It is when I want to do it on my own and when I want to be selfish and to hold on so tight that I find myself slipping into despair.  Or depression. 

And then I am reminded that they aren't mine.  They are God's and the love he has for my children is far more than I could ever offer.  It drops me to my knees.  I keep a sticky note in the front of my bible of a quote from John MacArthur that I once heard on one of his radio programs.  It says,

"Godly mothering focuses on the adulthood from the start. Focuses on the long term objective which is mature godly sons and daughters who will bring honor and glory to God."

So when these days of housework, homeschooling lessons, refereeing fights, making 3 meals a day, etc. seem long and I crash in bed at night... and I find myself slipping into the throws of depression that I am not seizing the day enough ... I am reminded that my long term objective is mature godly children who will bring glory to God!  And the love that God has for my little babies is far more than I could even fathom.  That is where I take great comfort in these long days of many parenting failures and a few triumphs.