Austin's Blog

While we were at the hospital, Valerie and I met with the Pelican Krewe, which is the palliative team for LCMC. A part of the meeting consisted of allowing us to talk about our sweet boy, what our wishes were for his care, and getting to know Gabriel. They asked at one point, “What is your biggest hope and dream for Gabriel?” Without hesitation, Valerie replied, “That he would grow up to be a man of God.” I added, “That he would be a man of God full of good character.” If you were to examine our prayers for Gabriel and Addie, you would find that we don’t pray grand and lofty prayers for them to be doctors, scientists, or the like. We simply pray that they would love Jesus with all their heart and do so from a young age. We pray for character.

Our conviction in this area is based upon the truth that we believe children are given to us by God as gifts and that we as parents are mere stewards. We are not owners. God owns them. Our job is to point them to the love, mercy, and grace of God. Paul David Tripp writes, “Good parenting, which does what God intends it to do, begins with this radical and humbling recognition that our children don’t actually belong to us. Rather, every child in every home, everywhere on the globe, belongs to the One who created him or her. Children are God’s possession (Psa. 127:3) for his purpose.” Having this view of parenting takes tremendous burdens off your back. Success is measured not in what you can do in your kids but in faithfulness as you attempt to embody the grace of God to them. Again, Tripp states, “Successful parenting is not first about what you’ve produced; rather, it’s first about what you have done. Let me say it this way: successful parenting is not about achieving goals (that you have no power to produce) but about being a usable and faithful tool in the hands of the One who alone is able to produce good things in your children.”

Furthermore, it brought immense comfort when the time came to give little Gabe back to God to know that He was going to the One who loved him the most—His Creator and Owner. Micah Fries says “One of the most important truths I regularly remind myself as a parent: God loves my children more than I do. We parent them, but we are also broken. We try to point them to Him, to love them and to shape their character. But, most importantly, we trust them in His hands.” We could trust letting our son go because the One who lovingly took him knows what it is like to lose a Son. We could trust giving our son to Jesus because He knows what it is like to die and rise again. We could trust giving our son to Jesus because He is the resurrection and the life. We could trust giving our son to Jesus because in Him, God knows what it means to weep over the loss of someone dear to us. We could trust giving our son to the Lord because he already belonged to Him. We had him on loan for 366 days. Our work in his life had reached its end. Somehow, God loves Gabriel more than we do. He can be trusted to take care of him well until we arrive. We are stewards; God is the owner.