In the past week, my oldest completed his freshmen year and began taking his driver’s education courses. I swear he was just driving his Little Tykes Crazy Coupe down the sidewalk. Next week, we will be celebrating my middle son’s promotion from eighth grade and signing him up for his high school courses. In a few weeks, I’ll be sending both of them off to YoungLife camp together. I act like I am fine when it’s needed. I smile when I drop them off to hang out with friends. But I give myself at least once a week to pray and process and cry a little (okay, sometimes it’s more like a lot).

I see all the cutesy instagram pictures of the marbles or rocks or fluffy, colorful cotton balls in the jar showing how many weeks we have left with our children. In the early years of motherhood, I see the need for reminders that these years are numbered. I know we can all use reminders to live out of priorities and with intentionality. But those of us parenting teenagers are acutely aware of the time ticking and the sands passing through the hour glass.

Every time I see one of those well-intentioned “You only get eighteen summers with your children” reminders, I battle feelings of fear, regret, and comparison. Maybe it is just me, but they make me feel rushed and frantic rather than present and trusting. Rather than press me into prayerful consideration of my children’s development, they make me want to book vacations we cannot afford. Rather than remind me of the God who sovereignly steers our family, they make me want to put my children at the center in an idolatrous place.

Eighteen years vs. Eternity

Believe me, I want my children to leave my home with a heart full of fond memories, a headful of unshakeable truths about God and themselves, and a handful of practical tools for engaging the world around them. I want them to have visited National Parks and played hours of card games semi-peaceably around our table. I want them to have years of soul-muscle-memory of being delighted in and enjoyed by their parents and siblings.

I fully agree that parenting our children under our roofs is a gift to be treasured; however, the goal of parenting is to come alongside God in growing them into peers with whom we will spend eternity. God has a plan for each of my children with days already recorded in his book (Psalm 139: 16; 2 Samuel 23: 5). They include the years spent under my roof, but, prayerfully, they far exceed those years.

They include idyllic days at the beach with ice cream cones, but they also include hardship and boredom and responsibility. They include happy memories in my home, but they also include laughter, tears and transitions outside of my presence. They include intentional parenting victories, but they also include parenting mistakes.

I fear that we are placing a crushing weight on parents with our focus on these eighteen years at home. Eighteen years cannot carry the freight that God intends for faithful sons and daughters — that takes a lifetime of days pre-determined and perfectly-purposed by an all-wise God who stands outside of the constrictions and limitations of time.

Parents play a wildly significant part in coming alongside God and enfleshing him in those early developmental years; however, neither parents nor children are the at center of this parenting gig: God is. And he is neither worried not hurried about our teenage children (or their parents who stare down the reality of empty nests).

Busy, Not Rushed

The writer Wendell Barry noted that farmers are always busy but never rushed. There are always scores of things that need to be done on a farm, but farmers never rush. There will be more work to be done tomorrow. And today’s work will require focus and faithfulness.

One line from the famous historic hymn “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” has been comforting my soul as we head into teenage summers: “unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might.”

Our God doesn’t rest, and our God doesn’t rush. He works out plans formed long ago with perfect faithfulness (Isaiah 25: 1). His sovereignty reigns over summers and continues well beyond our allotted time sharing an address with our children.

Within the boundary lines he has appointed for us, he has pleasant plans for us and promises to be present with us (Psalm 16: 5-6). This means that no matter our budget or number of vacation days, God has good for us and them. He has chances for us to develop in character and deepen in love. He has joyful moments when our hearts are stirred with good themes as well as moments when we cry out to God in distress and dependence (Psalm 45: 1-2; Psalm 61: 1-2).

May your summer be more filled with his presence and peace than popsicles!

When it comes to hospitality, I am more Bilbo Baggins than Better Homes & Gardens. This morning, as I was listening to Tolkien’s The Hobbit with my youngest son (a literary rite of passage of sorts in our home), I laughed aloud at my likeness to the little hobbit.

Though “he was fond of visitors,” he wanted visitors on his own terms. He liked to follow the schedule on his “Engagement Tablet” and wanted only the adventures of which he approved.

Gandalf, knowing what Bilbo needed and pushing him past what he thought he wanted, refused to take a polite no for an answer. Marking Bilbo’s round, green hobbit hole door with a secret sign, Gandalf made his home a host hollow for worlds Bilbo had hitherto not known.

When guests began flooding his hobbit hole the next day, Bilbo was startled but initially polite. He went from a stiff but kindly hospitality with the first unexpected guest to a flustered, even fearful, forced hospitality as dwarves kept showing up at his little hobbit hole.

“He liked visitors, but he liked to know them before they arrived, and he preferred to ask them himself. He had a horrible thought that the cakes might run short, and then he – as the host: he knew his duty and stuck to it however painful – might have to go without.”

By the time more guests had arrived, “The poor little hobbit sat down in the hall and put his head in his hands, and wondered what had happened, and what was going to happen, and whether they would all stay to supper.”

As I listened to Tolkien’s description of the hobbit’s heart as the omniscient narrator, I saw how easily the Lord (the ultimate omniscient narrator) might say the exact same of me through a smile. 

Convenience & Comfort

I like hospitality to a point. I like to host when I am on my A-game (or, at least, my B+ game). I like to host when our schedules are not crammed full and when my heart and soul feel together and ordered (things, which, in this season of our lives, are increasingly rare).

But the true heart of hospitality usually involves welcome at the cost of convenience and comfort. That’s what sets it apart from entertaining with its scheduled plans and well-manicured meals and table-scapes.

The last thing I want to do when I am in the middle of (or on the heals of) a disagreement with my husband or a wrestling over wisdom for my children is welcome people into my heart and home. But, if I am honest, it’s those moments when hospitality seems to most honor the heart of God. When there is risk involved and transparency, not just a meal, is served to our guests, I think God smiles a bit like Gandalf did knowingly at Bilbo Baggins.

A week ago, we made plans to host a couple who very recently began to attend our church. At the time, life felt ordered and my heart felt spacious. But when the day to host arrived, life had changed drastically. Worries crowded my distracted heart just as clutter crowded our messy counters. What I desperately wanted (and thought I needed) was to cancel so I could spend time alone processing the problems of the week and the subsequent waves of emotions they were causing.

I intended to share some cake and tea, but we ended up sharing our stories. And then, something amazing happened: the character and goodness of God were maximized and the looming problems were minimized.

Wrapped in the trappings of obedient hospitality, God gave me the gift I didn’t know how much I desperately needed: perspective. Just as Gandalf knew what Bilbo really needed, God invites us to a deeper adventure through the doorway of seemingly simple hospitality.

The Adventure of Obedience

In one of his essays, G.K. Chesterton talks about adventure in a way that deeply resonates with my experience of true hospitality and the relational adventures it begets. And I think Bilbo Baggins (after his adventures) would agree.

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

True biblical hospitality rarely fits neatly into our color-coded agendas. It costs us precious time and energy. It will oftentimes feel like an inconvenience to our comfort. It may make us wonder with Bilbo Baggins if there will be enough energy and peace and time to go around after the guests have been served and seen.

Hospitality leads to a life of relational adventures with our God, even if it doesn’t take us far from home like our reluctantly-hospitable hobbit friend. Through hospitality, new worlds are opened up to us. We are led to new territories emotionally and spiritually through hosting strangers who become friends. Our worlds broaden and stretch as we stretch our schedules and souls to fit new friends.

May God mark your doors, my friends, as Gandalf marked Bilbo’s. May obedience to God’s commands become the beginnings of grand adventures.

“Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:1-2).

“The end of all things is at hand: therefore, be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:7-9). 

Y’all. It has been an emotional roller-coaster ride in our family for the past few months. I have alluded to all the growth (and growing pains) God has been doing in our hearts individually and as a family unit. It looks like battles and soul skirmishes scattered throughout the week against lies and insecurities and performance anxiety. But it also looks bedtime breakthroughs.

It looks like a little boy who bravely tells me, “Momma, I am feeling anxious. But it’s not school or safety or baseball.”

It looks like me laying next to him and asking questions until he realizes the source of his stress: another brother heading to high school.

It looks like tears pooling in my eyes as I sit with him in his sadness that I cannot and should not fix. His brothers should and will grow and move on to other things. He will have to be in his school all alone without his brothers who are his heroes and best friends.

It looks like me scratching his back while he cries about change and processes all his fears.

It looks like me praying for him to trust that God will be constant companion and One who never changes.

Then it looks like me going to lay down in my own bed to do the same with my heavenly Father. It looks like me processing my worries and concerns and fears for these boys with my Father. It looks like him asking me searching questions to help assess my own confused heart. It looks like him sitting with me in the in-between, even though he knows exactly how this will all pan out. It looks my own bedtime breakthroughs after long day-time battles.

Parents Who Try to See

Being attuned to our boys and their emotional needs as they navigate all kinds of new challenges and opportunities feels like it has been my full-time job of late: noticing their body cues, asking them questions, providing a nurturing place to process and a net upon which to fall. These are the privileges of being a parent. I feel wildly unqualified for this job.

According to Peter Fongay, as quoted by Curt Thompson in his book The Anatomy of the Soul, even the most observant parents will only track with their children 45 to 50 percent of the time. So, batting 400 is winning, even if it feels like you are losing.

We try to see. We do our best as broken vessels with limited access to the secret places of the heart. As Curt Thompson says, “God does not expect parents to be perfect. He does, however, long for us to be perceptive.”

The God Who Sees

As parents, we get to point to the perfect parent in both our failures and our successes. If and when we get it wrong or miss the moment, we have the chance to point to the One who sees all and never fails. If and when we get it right, we image the Perfect Parent to them.

In the words of Curt Thompson, “God hits the mark every time. In the language of attachment, our heavenly father mentalizes at peak capacity – he lovingly senses and interprets feelings, desires, and intentions at all times.”

In Psalm 18, David expresses his experience of God’s being attuned to him.

“In my distress, I called upon the Lord, to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears…He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters” (Psalm 18:3 & 16).

The same David expects the same God to attune to him throughout his life. He writes, “Hear my cry, O God, listen my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy” (Psalm 61:1-2).

As we seek to see them, He sees both us and them (Hebrews 4: 13). As we grow in this process of parenting, he is perfectly parenting both parents and children (Hebrews 12: 9-11). As we pray for them as best we can, the Spirit is praying for them constantly, effectively, and according to the will of God (Romans 8: 26-27).

This is all our hope as we keep walking through these major emotional and relational growth spurts.

As we experience battles and bedtime breakthroughs, he is offering us our own battles and breakthroughs.

All shall be well. And all shall be well. Our Jesus does all things well.

What I make necessary for my contentment, I make a little lord in my life. Anything and everything to which I attach my joy, my peace, my security, I make a contingency to my contentment.

Very few of us would ever walk around proudly declaring, “My contentment rests on complex contingencies;” however, most believers in Christ still live like this is true. Our lives tell on us. Our fears expose our excessive attachments and our compulsions uncover our complex contingencies.

The older my children get and the more complex their needs and their worlds, the more I am realizing how much my contentment is contingent upon them: their health, their joy, their mental and spiritual well-being. These are not bad for which to pray on their behalf, but I cannot let my contentment be contingent upon them. To do so is both unwise and unbiblical.

One of the gloriously unique realities of Christianity is contentment in Christ. Such a contentment has zero contingencies, yet we must contend for this contentment.

Paul was able to tell the Philippians that he had learned the secret of Christian contentment. He gradually learned that, whether he abounded or was abased, he could be fully and completely content in Christ and with Christ (Phil. 4: 11-13). The following principles have been helping me contend for simple contentment in Christ.

• Receive with gratitude, but don’t grasp.

Paul longed for the early churches to know this kind of contentment without contingencies. He longed for them to be freed from joy-suffocating and peace-diminishing excessive attachments to this world and the things of it. It was not that he wanted them to reject good things or deflect temporal blessings. He knew that all things created by God were good (1 Tim. 4: 4-5); however, he also knew the tendency of the human heart towards worshipping and serving created things rather than the Creator (Rom. 1: 25).

We need not be ascetics to contend for contentment in Christ. We need only receive his blessings without grasping. As the psalmist wrote, “When riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” (Psalm 62: 11).

• Be sated with favor, not favorable circumstances.

When I feel impoverished by circumstances or trapped in contentment full of contingencies, I lead my heart to remember our sure, unfading inheritance in Christ. Before Moses died, he spent time blessing each of the twelve tribes of Israel. These blessings are mere hints of the fullness we have received in Christ.

Lately, Moses’s blessing over Naphtali has been both confronting and comforting my heart.

“And of Naphtali he said, ‘O Naphtali, sated with favor, and full of the blessing of the Lord, possess the lake and the South’.” (Deut. 33: 23).

While the tribe of Naphtali probably enjoyed having the lake land as their portion, we have something far more astounding: the living waters springing up from within us in Christ (John 4: 10-14). Oases of creature comfort, while gifts from the Lord, are susceptible to drought. The living water of Christ will never run dry. Thus, to base our contentment on anything other Christ is to live with complex contingencies.

When circumstances are favorable, when your children are close-by and healthy, when work is going well, when marriage feels like a walk in the park, thank God. But don’t build your contentment on the shakeable base of favorable circumstances. Do the hard, God-honoring, soul-keeping work of finding contentment in the favor Christ has secured for you.

• In the midst of presents, be content with his presence.

Contentment is less about tallying his presents towards us and more about remembering his presence with us. Our culture is all about gratitude and counting our blessings. While gratitude is a good thing, Christ invites us into something much deeper than lists of blessings: he gives us access to the Blessed One ( 1 Timothy 6: 15).

The writer of Hebrews make a powerful connection between contentment and the presence of Christ. Towards the end of his letter to the Hebrew believers, he writes, “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me’?” (Hebrews 13:8).

As life grows more intricate and complex, our contentment does not have to grow in contingencies. Having Christ, we have all we need to ride out the ebbs and flows of circumstances until we are with him forever.