Being left behind stinks. That’s about as tastefully as I can say it. To want to be somewhere other than the place you currently cannot leave is frustrating. But when you’re sidelined from a much-celebrated rite of passage, missing the boat feels like utter abandonment.

Friends are beginning to pack twin-XL sheets and blankets, book crates, and starry-eyed dreams into car trunks for a ride across town or state. Maggie is staying home. An urgent need trumps a long-held plan.

We’ve been through this before. Many times. I’ve lost track of events, trips, camps, parties, opportunities, and ministry she’s missed due to cancer and it’s even worse treatment. This one hurts more. Digs deeper into tightly held ideals of young adulthood. And for a parent, it turns the tightrope balancing of emotions – sad you’re moving out while proud you’re moving on – into a free fall without a bottom. Just sad and helpless to fix it.

My normal m.o. to counteract discouragement is to placate. Never one to tolerate the tears of my child, I usually do what I have done for eighteen years. I stick in the pacifier. We parents are good at that, aren’t we? Those soothers evolve and morph into bigger, brighter, and costlier things, but the intent is the same. Offer a substitute to distract and keep peace while the real need remains unmet. Maggie, ten months old at the time, literally threw away her own pacifier at the mall and never asked for it again. I think maybe that was the day she discovered shoes and purses.

I’ve become so adept at plugging plastic in a hole that begs for something lasting that I don’t even realize when I do it. I mean well. Intentions may be good but they’re still mere road pavers. If I’m not careful, my intentions may do more harm than help.

I’ve realized as I struggle to help Maggie overcome isolation and loneliness, I really can’t do much. The best thing I can do is not distract her from a moment of God’s orchestration. Why do I keep forgetting that lesson? Once again, I want to rush in and solve a problem that has nothing to do with my earthly remedies. My own disappointment and jealousy drive me to make up for all she is missing. To give her what “everyone” else gets to experience.

I put all the effort I can into being the caretaker of my family. But I overstep my bounds and get into God’s place when their world gets rocked or dreams shatter. He wants to be as much to my children as I know He wants to be to me. Why do I stiff-arm Him away and run too quickly to their aid? How will Maggie hear the whispers of God over my jackhammer breaking the rocky path all around her? I know He could shout over the noise of my busyness, but those most sacred moments of grace are shared in the quiet space of the soul. A soul free of distractions and achingly aware of its hunger.

My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. 2 Cor. 12:9. About that verse Alexander Maclaren says, “The only way by which that faith in Jesus Christ can ever be kindled in a man’s soul is through the sense of his need and emptiness.” The very need in Maggie that breaks my heart should drive me to my knees or pin me to my chair not send me to the store or to my own closet of resourcefulness. She cannot feel her need of Christ if I am filling the need with garbage.

God wants to speak to me, not just Maggie, in the moments after a dream breaks. If I’m desperately collecting the shards and reaching for the glue, how can I listen for His voice? I love the way Maclaren puts it: “God works with broken reeds. If a man conceits himself to be an iron pillar, God can do nothing with or by him.” Hmm. I’ve always heard being a pillar of strength a good thing, the ideal, and the right example for my daughters. Once again, I need to hear His message to both of us: be disappointed, so I can bring joy; be lonely, so I can visit; be in pain, so I can soothe; mourn, so I can comfort; need, so I can satisfy. Tall order for a mom with the illusion of self-sufficiency, I know. But the best I can give God and my family is the admission of my weakness. Then He can give grace to all.