As I sat at my kitchen table on the phone with my mom nine hundred miles away, tears pooled in my eyes. I was a new mom, experiencing so many new things for the first time. I was seeking help on what to do with a baby who suddenly wouldn’t sleep through the night and seemed more fussy than normal. My mom was advising that it was time to start adding solid foods to my breastfed baby’s diet, and this felt like my first significant parenting transition. “You mean he won’t need ME for his entire sustenance anymore? Will we still have a bond if he starts the weaning process? Is it really time for this? He still feels so young!” My mom was right; my sweet, precious firstborn son needed to transition to the next stage of infancy for both of our good.
The Hard of Transitions
Parenting transitions are hard. Whether it’s weaning your baby or watching your child drive themself to high school for the first time, it can feel like we are constantly figuring out the next stage of parenting our children. Nothing ever stays the same. As soon as we get one stage figured out, the next one comes in like a wrecking ball, knocking us off center. Hopefully, it also knocks us to our knees and back into the loving embrace of our heavenly Father.
Back-to-school season is an opportunity to be reminded once again that even though stages of parenting will always be changing, our God will never change.
The Good of Transitions
As a mother of five, I know that parenting transitions are for my good and sanctification, and yet, I still struggle believing that change and transitions are actually going to accomplish that. I love that in God’s loving care, he includes examples in Scripture like the father in Mark 9:24 who wanted Jesus to help his demon-controlled son and cries out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
My soul resonates with this sentiment. I say, “Lord, I believe that this is for my good, but as I take my very next breath, I’m filled with doubt. I need help to inhale again your goodness and faithfulness as I exhale my fears and doubts.”
There are times that I will literally match my breathing to these words or something similar. It may seem silly, but having a physical action attached to an emotional response is very helpful. Try it—find that phrase or verse that you could literally breathe in and out to calm your spirit when the anxiety rises to the surface in your heart. For example, in Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel he shares that he would breathe in and out to “Abba, I belong to You.”
In seasons of transition, it seems that God often gives me a particular song that I can play around the house or in the car to remind me of his faithfulness to me through the lyrics. Recently, that song has been “Faithful Still” by KingsPorch. I love the lyrics of this particular song: “When my heart is racing deep inside my chest and I’m underneath the weight of anxiousness. When fear is raging and I can’t catch my breath, I will remember . . . You are faithful still. You have carried me through deeper waters, walked beside me through the fire . . . you are faithful still.”
Oh, how true that is. What a loving, faithful God we serve, as he gently guides us through the crazy waters of parenting and loving these precious people he has entrusted to our care.
The Hope of Transitions
Finally, in seasons of transition (or anytime really), writing out a particular Scripture verse or passage and placing it all over my house is very helpful for me. My go-to verse is Lamentations 3:22-24: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end . . . Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion . . . I will hope in him.” I write the verse on Post-it notes and place them on my car dashboard, on the mirror in my bathroom, at the kitchen sink, on the microwave, and next to my computer. All to remind me that God is with me in all seasons of parenting—whether it’s dropping my littlest off at her first day of preschool, signing up my highschooler for an SAT prep class, or sitting next to a training potty in the middle of my living room. Our God is faithful, and even when I doubt my ability to believe, he’s strong enough to carry me through any season of transition.
In the hard and the good of transition seasons, we can cling to the hope that we have in our never-changing, all-powerful, ever-present God. He never changes, yes and amen.
