I lay awake in bed last night thinking about how my oldest just lost her first tooth. I was thinking about it because I hadn’t been thinking about it. I’d barely given it a passing thought when it started wiggling a few weeks back. Things had been busy. I was excited for her though and thought, “How is she old enough for this?” That was all.

But then yesterday, I enjoyed the toothless grin of my five-year-old going on (ever so quickly) six-years-old. And when I lay down to sleep, I thought about that little tooth.

She had been so cranky when it was cutting through when she was just a few months old. But the thing was, I was new at mothering and had no idea that was what was going on. She was fussy. Constantly. I tried everything. One day I put her in the sling and walked four miles in the neighborhood just to keep her from crying. It worked for her but failed to stop my own tears. Then, at just four months, she woke up with a tooth.

Oh. Well that makes sense. My newborn was now an infant. A new stage. And we had made it there together.

Each new stage of motherhood is like that, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s a struggle and yet it arrives either way. And each new stage is a bidding of farewell to something else. In this is both the sorrow and the joy. But each new stage is a gift that couldn’t be received without saying goodbye.

As sentimental as motherhood can be, our children need us to cherish them as they are now as much as we did with their chubby baby cheeks.

And we must not believe that we’ve truly lost something in this. For the love we poured into them then has brought them to this place today.

That happy toothless grin was wrought by both our tears.

But we also must not try to stuff down the pangs of sadness that come with the passing of each stage. There is a deep pain that comes with motherhood that no matter how hard we try we cannot get around. It is part of it. And the embracing of it allows us to experience a deep joy and believe that God is doing something.

Rachel must have felt sorrow as she was slipping out of this life just as her little boy Benjamin was born. We know Jochebed must have felt it when she pushed Moses out into the bulrushes. Out of her control. Out of her hands. Hannah felt it when she let go of her little boy’s hand as she gave him to Eli the priest. Or Mary, we know how that sword pierced her heart from the very beginning unto the end.

Even though our lives differ greatly from these women, surely God gave their stories to help us.

This world. Oh this broken world where we are not even promised tomorrow with our children.

And then the tiny pangs as we watch them grow up right before our eyes. Their babyhood slipping away. So many goodbyes.

But in order for God to use us and them, we must seek the joy in the sorrow. They are intricately interwoven. But joy must win. And it can win because the God we trust made all things right when He let His own Son go. He gave us the most precious Gift in the greatest of all goodbyes. We cannot even identify with the pain the Father felt in turning His back on his Son. But Mary, she was a mother. We can close our eyes and imagine her pain even if we cannot know its fullness.

And we remember how God took care of Rachel’s boys ~ Joseph and Benjamin. God never left them alone. When Jochebed trusted God with her baby in the basket, a nation was brought out of slavery. God used Samuel to bring great repentance to His people and victory over enemies. But what if they hadn’t let go? And that is just the amazing thing. We don’t have to just let go. For Rachel, Jochebed, Hannah, and Mary, they didn’t just let go, they gave them to God in their letting go.

And that is what we must do. As we say goodbye and we feel the pangs of years slipping away, we give our children to God. We give our tears to Him. We are holding on as we let go. We trust the One who created us and our children in the first place.

As mothers who have put their hope in Christ we have a joy in each passing season because we have a Savior.

We don’t know how God will use our children. They may live a quiet life. They may lead a hard life. They may be in the shadows. They may be in the spotlight.

But one thing for sure, we can trust that all the tiny goodbyes along the way are preparing our children for the life God has for them. God uses our tears and trust to build their futures. I don’t know how it all works but that is the amazing thing about God.

The God who spoke the world into existence knows the number of our days. He is growing us up just as He grows them. And He is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory where there are no goodbyes. No more sorrow. No more death. And that is what makes the joy so very great ~ our hope is in Him. And He is the One who can enable us to cherish the gift in every goodbye.

~

Ephesians 3:14-21 

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen