Am I a bad mother if I let go of my kids and something bad happens? I have teens and young adults. ‘Nuff said. The wisdom I hear is that I need to let go. I “ought” to trust God. And I know that’s true, in theory. 

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But what about when I do manage to keep my mouth shut during, let’s say, the rest of their Christmas visit, and they say things that scare me? Their ideas will lead to bad choices! If I successfully let go, am I responsible for their bad decisions? 

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Am I actually a bad mother?

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Then I thought of Moses’ mother. Her shaking hands smearing bitumen on the thick, tightly-woven sides of a basket. She’s trying everything she can to make it safe, waterproof. “It’ll hold. Dear God, make it hold.” 

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She has to do this. What else can she do? She can’t keep him home forever. And when she’s done her utter best, in a moment of what feels like insanity, she lays a blanket in the little vessel, and then her son, her infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes. 

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Then she pushes him into the Nile. In a reed cradle. She might as well be feeding him to the crocodiles. How can this mother walk away?

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Is she a bad mother?

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I have no trouble defending this mother’s actions, but only because I know the triumphant end of the story! God was at work in this dark moment.  But Moses’ mother didn’t know that, she only believed it.  What she knew was that no matter how much she loved Moses, she could not save him. That job had to be  left to another parent.

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And that’s what made her a good mother! She didn’t “let go” of Moses, she clung to the promise that God would never let go of him – or her! She let another parent take control of her precious son.

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Another parent who would lay his child, wrapped in weakness, in mortality, in swaddling clothes that may as well have been grave linens, in a place where animals eat. In a manger. God the father, in perfect trinitarian love, sent his son by the Holy Spirit into the human realm. Which was as good as feeding him to the "crocodiles."

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And that’s the answer. 

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What if I let go and something bad happens? Am I a bad mother? 

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No, because I must send my kids into the world, out of my control. Good mothers send their children into the powerful hands of God who guides their boat. Yes, they will suffer. They will fail. They will be wrong, but God is always at work, especially in the dark moments.

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Because God is a good father!