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Sep 27, 2025 06:00am

We Raise Them to Leave

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The day she took her first steps.
The day he started kindergarten.
When her sixteen-year-old self drove away for the first time.
His high school graduation.
Her first job.
The day he moved out.
When she walks down the aisle.
When she holds her first baby in her arms.

Each milestone takes your baby one step away from you.
It’s such an unnatural thing to let go of the one person you were created to carry, love, train, and nurture. I recently heard a quote that said as your children get older, you don’t stop parenting them—you simply parent from the porch instead of the nursery. How true that is.

The love of a parent is the most selfless, unconditional love this side of heaven.

Did you know the first mention of love in the Bible is all the way in Genesis 22? It’s not in Adam and Eve’s story. It’s not in the story of Noah. It’s not even between Abraham and Sarah.

It’s in Genesis 22:2, when God tells Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

Wait—what? The very first time “love” appears in Scripture, God is asking a father to give up the son he waited years for?

Yet that’s exactly what happened. God asked Abraham to take his boy, hike up a mountain with wood for the fire, build an altar, bind his son to it, and lift the knife.

Can you imagine the faith it took for Abraham to look into his son’s eyes, knowing what God was asking?

We know the rest of the story. God stopped Abraham just in time and provided a ram in Isaac’s place. And then God said in verse 16, “Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee…”

Because Abraham loved God more than his son, God blessed him. Because Abraham trusted God to care for his son, God blessed him.

Do we trust God with our children more than our own plans and protection? Or are we holding so tightly that we forget they belong to Him first?

Moses’ mother understood this too. She trusted God so much that she placed her baby in a basket, set him in the Nile River, and let him go. She literally floated him into God’s hands.

Can you imagine the faith it took to kiss him one last time and push him toward the unknown?

But she knew—God loved her son more than she ever could. God’s arms would carry him further than hers ever could.

And then, there’s the greatest act of parental love ever shown—God the Father sending His only Son to the cross. He watched Him beaten, mocked, spit upon, and nailed to a tree… not because He didn’t love Him, but because His plan was good, and it would mean salvation for the world.

If He could be trusted with His Son, we can trust Him with ours.

So, mama, maybe today your “letting go” looks like waving from the porch instead of the nursery. Maybe it looks like sending them to college, watching them take a new job, or giving them away at the altar. Whatever it is—remember this: God’s hands are safer than ours. His plans are better than ours. His love is deeper than ours.

Place them in His care.
Lay them on the altar.
Wave from the porch with trust and peace.

Because the God who gave them to you loves them even more than you do—and He will never let them go.

1 Samuel 1:27-28, For this child I prayed; and the LORD hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the LORD; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the LORD. And he worshipped the LORD there.