“This cannot be happening!” were my thoughts at the realization that I was placing my 17-year old son on a plane bound for Beijing, China for 4 months. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I was wiping his cuts and praying over him before he went to bed? My heart was filled with anguish as I sought for the strength to keep it together long enough for him to get on that plane. My heart felt a deep pain as I realized this was a “cutting away” process in a mother’s heart.  “Why can’t I get it together, he is NOT dying?” I muttered to my husband through my tears. “It’s really going to be ok. He will be back in four months!” came his reassuring voice.

I watched until there was nothing left to see as he walked up the ramp to the departing gate. I savored every second of the sight of him and then I turned around and sobbed. My husband was not sure what to do with me. I was not sure what to do with me. I made my way through the airport and back to my car. The opportunity to drive home alone provided me with privacy, time for tears, and an emergency hearing before the Lord. I began to beg, plead, and make demands of the Lord. If I was going to release my son to do Kingdom work, then the Lord needed to remember His end of the bargain! My pleadings resembled that of an untrusting child to her father trying to negotiate a sure guarantee.

After my time of prayer, pleading, and tears, my mind went back to that moment at the airport watching him walk up that ramp for his plane. Quietly, the Lord began to whisper to my fearful, anguished heart. As his mother, I had been forced to let go of my beloved son. Love compelled me to let him go. New places, new people, and new opportunities! Despite the reality of this wonderful opportunity, my heart was torn. Then my mind drifted back to a different moment in history that for now could only exist in my imagination where a Father surely agonized over the releasing of HIS firstborn Son for a mission altogether different. Like me, this Father was choosing to release His Son as a compulsion of love. But the future was not the same. His Son would walk a dark road. And this Father would have to choose between His beloved Son and the crown of His creation. I don’t know how He did it. As an omniscient Father, He knew what future awaited His Son. They had been together eternally and now, as an act of love, He was releasing Him to a future of rejection, pain, and yes, ultimately death; a brutal death on a cross of sacrificial love.

In that moment, I realized two things. First, God truly understands our pain in releasing our children to Him. In reality, He endured a much greater pain than I was experiencing. It IS difficult to let go, but our children were never ours to keep. They were His first and born to fulfill a destiny anointed by Him. To hold them back in fear or selfishness is not love at all. Secondly, I experienced an overwhelming sense of our Father’s love for us. That He would care enough about us to release His Son and deal with the searing pain of a Father’s heart to rescue all of humanity, including…..my son, was overwhelming. This moment produced a humbling response of gratitude to my Lord. Who was I not to trust this kind of Father? Suddenly, I experienced peace as the Scripture flooded my soul, “That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.” 2 Tim. 1:12. I was fully convinced. My son and I were both in safe hands. Those beautiful hands that released HIS Son could be safely trusted to guard and protect MY son. He is a trustworthy and, most definitely, a loving Father.