If you were at Launch, you heard this. For those who were not at Launch, here is what I said to parents when I talked to the group who were there.
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Let’s start with this video:
How many of you felt that’s what parenting looked like when your kids were toddlers?
And there was a time when chasing and grabbing and holding onto them was appropriate.
This transition from parenting children to parenting adults is not always an easy one. It’s challenging. What is appropriate when they are 2 years old is different than what is appropriate and helpful and right when they are 18 or 22, or 25, or 30 years old.
Our role as parents changes. Suddenly we find ourselves cheering from the sidelines rather than directing from center field.
Many of us have always said that our children really belong to the Lord. Sometimes the Lord asks us “Do you really believe that?” When my son was a teenager, I put him on an airplane for a mission trip when I had a strong and persistent sense I would never see him again. But despite my fears, I knew there was no appropriate reason to keep him at home. I said good-bye, still thinking it was the last time I would see him. He did come home fine, but in the meantime, I learned something important. When put to the test, I really did believe my kids ultimately belonged to the Lord. And my own spiritual life changed as a result of acting on that.
So as we talk about these things, I’m going to suggest this as a helpful framework:
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What is God doing in my son or daughter?
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What does appropriate letting go look like at this stage?
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What does God want to do in me during this season?
First – what is God doing in my son or daughter?
Eugene Peterson, the guy who created the Message version of the Bible and who has written a number of books, says that one of the primary goals of parenting is to transfer the primary voice in our kids lives from our voice to God’s voice. He uses the story of Samuel and Eli. It’s night. Samuel is awakened by someone calling his name. He runs to Eli who says “I didn’t call.” This keeps happening – until Eli realizes what is going on and tells Samuel to respond this way the next time: “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” And God begins to speak to Samuel.
Samuel had been dedicated to God at a young age. He had been raised in the temple. He “served” God daily – and yet there still came a point where he needed to learn for himself what God’s voice – and God’s call on his life – sounded like.
Many of your Racers have been raised in the church, in solid families. They’ve served the Lord. They may never have doubted their faith. But there still comes a point when they need to know for sure that they’ve made the transition from the faith of their family and their environment to a faith that will sustain them, that they can solidly build their futures on.
It is not necessarily a reflection on your parenting, the spiritual foundation you gave them, or your current role, to say they need to step a bit outside that and see if it holds true for them.
A Kingdom journey – something like the Race – can help them do that. It can challenge and deepen their faith. It can teach them more of who God is and who they are in Him. There are certain lessons that just can’t be learned in our comfort zones.
Your Racers will see things that may cause them to cry out “Where are you in this God?” Where are you in the midst of gut-wrenching poverty? Where are you when a man buys a young girl for the night? Where are you when the baby we thought you were going to heal – dies? And when they push through the roughness of that, when they cry out to God in the midst of that, they come away changed.
So they need something like the Race for their spiritual journey. But they need it for other reasons as well.
Our culture, by and large, has lost any significant rites of passage. Things that mark your initiation into adulthood. Your accomplishment of challenges and hardships, celebrated in the context of a community. Without this, we have kids self-initiating into adult behavior at too young of an age in unhealthy ways, without a community celebrating and supporting them, and we have 30 year olds who have never become adults. In fact, adolescence is now considered by many to extend into the mid-20s. That wasn’t the case a generation ago.
They also need to learn to be resilient. To develop the ability to fail and learn from that and try again. And then again if necessary. They need to know how to persevere and problem solve and fix things that have gone wrong. As a whole, our generation has not built that into our children. For a lot of reasons we’ve rescued our kids from all sorts of situations and consequences. Our intentions have been good but by doing so, we have short changed them. We haven’t always trained them to carry a large amount of responsibility or to develop resilience.
A fear of failure has kept many of them from trying new things. They feel pressure to be “perfect”. To not fail. The founder of Spanx talks about how her dad, at the dinner table, would ask her what she had failed at that day – and then he would celebrate it. The purpose was not to shame, but to celebrate trying new things and it redefined failure for her. The Racers need a supportive environment to discover new things, and try out their God-given gifts.
So this generation, the Racer generation, needs something like the Race. They need a rite of passage. They need both a physical and a spiritual challenge that causes them to push deeper into Jesus and who they are created to be. They need more responsibility and more opportunities to be bold. They need to get their hands dirty – and along the way they become resilient and compassionate problem solvers and world changers.
So, that’s the first part – what God might be doing in your sons and daughters.
The second part of the framework – what does appropriate letting go look like at this stage? Specifically, what does it look like for World Race parents.
One thing it means is you let go of your need to know all the details. The sooner you can let go of your need to know exactly where they are and what they are doing, the better it will be for them, and the better it will be for you.
Then you are operating from the posture that hearing from them is a gift, not an unmet need.
It means you don’t rescue them when they call home in month 4 (or week 3) and say “This is too hard, I want to come home.” If it really is time for them to come home, that will be discerned – but not in the first phone call home. You encourage them to stick it out. You remind them of God’s call to them.
It means you put their journey – and what God is doing in them – ahead of your desire to have them at home.
It means you don’t pressure them – directly or indirectly – to call you as soon as they arrive somewhere, or even once a week. You don’t take personal offense if you see them online but realize they are chatting with someone other than you. You accept that there may be 1 week or even 3-4 weeks in between direct contact.
It means you encourage them through commenting on their blogs but you affirm what they wrote and what God is doing in them and don’t just gush about how much you miss them.
We’re not saying don’t miss them. You WILL miss them. And it is certainly okay to let them know that. But don’t make it your primary message. And instead of subtly expecting them or pressuring them to fix that by staying in closer touch, you give them the freedom to explore on their own. You step back a bit. You do not imply that your loneliness is a problem they are supposed to fix.
So we come to the third point of the framework. What does God want to do in you during this season?
And while parts of that will be very individualized, there are some common things we often see in WR parents.
First, you may need to grieve the pain of loss. It’s normal and healthy for birds to leave the nest. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an appropriate grieving. I believe you can give yourself permission to grieve, without getting stuck there.
Second, deal honestly with your fears. Not all WR parents are fearful – but many are. The desire for safety – which is not a bad desire – can become an idol and can immobilize us. We may even try to disguise it as wisdom. We say “I don’t think it is wise for them to go ______” but when we are brutally honest we really mean “I am afraid for them to go ______.” But fear can immobilize us from responding to God’s call on our lives and keep us from releasing our kids to God’s call on their lives.
There will be opportunities as your Racers travel for you to press into the Lord and be honest that you are nervous, or afraid. A news story that a year ago would not even have caught your eye will suddenly catch you off guard – because you now have a Racer in that country.
And you will have plenty of opportunities to take your fear to the Lord. A parent who launched their Racer in 2017 wrote a beautiful blog right after Launch about how the Lord had this and she was peaceful. And then her daughter’s first blog mentioned being given bulletproof vests for ministry time. [Stay with me – we do not go where they need bulletproof vests.] She sees that reference and immediately begins an internal dialog with the Lord. “I know I was just this morning saying how grateful I am that You have this. But – bulletproof vests. Is risk management okay with this?” And she goes back and forth with the Lord. She takes another look at the blog and it just says “vests” but she knew she had seen bulletproof vests. So she wonders if Adventures/World Race made her edit the blog to hide how dangerous it was. And all these thoughts are whirling through her head. But she writes about how she “lands” back at the starting point – Lord, You have this. [They do check in with their daughter – and she had overheard someone joking about being in Colombia and bullet-proof vests, had not realized it was a joke and thought that’s what they were given. What they were actually given were orange reflective vests.]
By the way – we so appreciate how this mom handled it. Instead of immediately jumping on the FB page and accusing us of not caring about the Racers, she tried to piece together what she had learned about us with what her daughter said, she pressed into the Lord about her own fears, and she was able to ask for clarification from her daughter.
So – press into your fears.
One thing you can do is move to an offensive posture in prayer. Too often it feels like we pray from a “huddled in the corner” position, asking God to keep us safe. And I’m not against praying for safety. But the early church, when faced with strong persecution did not ask for safety but prayed “Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness ….” (Acts 3:29) Pray that your Racers would be bold.
As believers, we acknowledge both a spiritual realm and a physical realm. Erwin McManus (a pastor and author) tells the story of his son, who had been scared by demon stories at a Christian summer camp. His son asks “Will you pray God will keep me safe?” Erwin’s response? “I can’t pray God will always keep you safe, but I will pray God makes you so dangerous when you enter a room, the demons flee.” Pray that your Racers would be dangerous in the spiritual realm.
So – grieve the loss, press into your fears and third …
Third, and this is the biggest thing, allow God to speak into this season – and upcoming seasons – of your life. A Race alum, who is sometimes on the alumni Racer panel, was asked “What is the best thing your parents did for you while you were on the Race?” His answer – “They followed hard after Jesus themselves.”
There is still important work for us to do. And for many of us, we’re realizing at this stage that we want to invest our time in things that matter, that leave a legacy. It’s not that we haven’t been doing that already – but sometimes there is a new restlessness. Pay attention to restlessness. And for some, often times more for moms than dads, we need to look for new sources of identity. We’ve been moms and that no longer requires 24/7 attention. We need to discover what’s next.
Let this be your journey too. In fact, your Racers prayed for this at Training Camp. Parent Ministry gets a few minutes with Racers during Training Camp and that’s how we ended the time. With them praying with each other for your spiritual journey while they are on the Race.
So what does your Kingdom journey look like? If you’re not quite to the empty nest stage, where is He growing you and giving you opportunities right where you are? If you’re at or approaching a new season, what dreams were put on hold years ago that He might want to reawaken? What new dreams does He want to birth? Where are you restless? What legacy do you want to leave?
This is a great season to explore that. For me, I moved from Connecticut to Georgia to work for Adventures in Missions and build Parent Ministry. For others, they’ve found ministries in their home town. We have a few people in your season of life who have served a stint overseas. Or maybe your skills will be used in a new way for kingdom purposes. I have a friend who heads up a graduate program in forensic science and who has spent a career consulting on that internationally. He’s now devoting himself to using those skills to prosecute sex traffickers.
Let me end with two pieces of advice. First, bless your Racer. Even if you are scared. Even if you are sad. Even if you are going to miss them – which you will. Even if you are still unsure whether this is the right decision for them. You can bless them, even if you can’t yet bless their decision. If you want to give your Racer a gift before they leave, let them know that you bless them.
Second, embrace your own journey. Let the Lord teach you about abandonment and brokenness and dependence. Build community with other WR parents. Read the Kingdom Journeys book. Participate in the studies on it. Press into Him when you are afraid, when you miss them, when you haven’t heard anything for 3 weeks. Let Him stretch you to trust in new ways. Let Him stir old dreams that have been put on hold. Let Him birth new dreams. Be open to areas in your life where He needs to be Lord. Expect Him to be at work in you as well as in your Racer. Expect to have your own stories and not just the ones you hear from your Racer on the field.
You’ve dedicated and released them before. You are doing it again here. Let me pray for you.
