Our Kids Need So Much

Our kids need so much.

Healing and connection and closure and attachment and restoration. Not to mention, you know, the food and the homework help and the diaper changes and the tucking-in-bed-for-the-fourteenth-time-won’t-you-for-the-love-just.go.to.sleep.

I feel like the source. Like it all relies on me. Like they all need me to be operating at 100% all the time for them to be ok. Like I have to regulate all.the.people. in my home. Like it’s just too much and too heavy for one quite-needy-myself mama.

When I start to notice the heaviness of life, it’s a wake up call that—just maybe—I’m carrying around a weight that isn’t mine to carry. It’s like a blaring horn: *Stay. in. your. lane.* I have an important job, maybe the most important job. But my job is to clock in and do the work (love, teach, pray, and the like) and then leave it to Him. I can’t carry the burden of outcomes and changes and happy endings.

The thing my kids need the very most is the thing I’m least able to provide. They need to be saved. I can trick myself into thinking I can manufacture these other, smaller changes. But I’m well aware that I can’t change my kids’ hearts, can’t transform their lives, can’t redeem their souls.

There’s nothing quite like not being able to save your children to break you out of your Savior complex. So for all the needs—from bedtime to attachment to the state of their very souls—I am completely dependent on THE Savior. I repent for striving to carry what He already carried, already provided for. And I relinquish the weight that was never mine to lug in the first place.