HaleyA few weeks ago, on the way home from a quick getaway, I made reservations for us to visit Lake Lula Land Trust near Lookout Mountain. It’s been on my bucket list for a decade, and I was finally going to see it for myself.
Once we hiked in to the waterfall, it was everything I’d hoped for—overwhelming, powerful, deafening. You could feel the spray from 50 yards away. My oldest boys, 14 and nearly 13, took off exploring, climbing rocks and wading through Rock Creek.
At one point they disappeared around a large boulder near the waterfall’s base, out of my sight, and my mama heart sank. Surely they were okay. I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t call out to them over the roar. But surely, they were okay.
I stood on a rock farther down the creek, watching the spot where I’d last seen them, waiting for a glimpse of their heads. Waiting for them to need me, but praying they didn’t.
And it hit me in that moment of waiting that this experience is mirroring what’s happening in their lives as teenage boys. They simply don’t need me the way they used to. They’re figuring out their own paths, and I’m trying so hard to let them—to let them climb their own rocks and wade into their own water without me hovering. They are wild and curious and adventurous, all the things God built into boys on purpose.
So, I did all I could in those minutes at the creek: I prayed for their safety. And it was a reminder that as they age, my role as a mom begins to shift from caretaker to prayer warrior. My role is shifting from holding their hands to opening mine. God is graciously giving me little glimpses like this to prepare my mama heart.
After what felt like forever, our family decided it was time to head back. My husband, with his boisterous voice, called out: “Boys, come back.” And almost instantly, two heads popped up and started weaving their way over the rocks toward us.
And I nearly lost it at that moment as God revealed His own faithfulness.
My boys always hear their daddy’s voice. It cuts through the roar of the crowd at football games, through the chaos of a soccer match, through two acres of trees and buildings on our property. Somehow, no matter how much noise is in the way, they’re attuned to it. They know it instantly, and they come.
And standing there watching them climb back toward us, I realized my struggle was never really about whether my boys could hear me. It was about whether they’d know the right voice to listen for since mine isn’t the loudest one in their lives anymore.
As much as I’d like to keep them close, that is no longer my prayer. It’s that as they adventure toward adulthood, outgrowing the need for me to call them back, the voice of their Heavenly Father cuts through the noise of the world around them. And when He says, “Come back,” they run toward him as eagerly as they ran toward their daddy’s voice that day at the creek.
