My superheros are still letting go.

When I was a kid, I witnessed obedience in my parents' lives. Crazy obedience (crazy as in good crazy). Wherever God led them - they followed. From Central America to South America to Southeast Asia. They modeled Christ-centered servant hood for me from birth and still do today.

As we began to move into the final stages of our transition to Papua New Guinea I see this crazy good obedience displayed again. Maybe in a more visible way than ever (maybe because I am consciously watching for it now). I see an obedience that I have now begun to model for my own children. The obedience of "letting go". 

My mom called me this week to tell me she was reading a devotional about Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22) and what it means to let your children go. She had studied the same devotional when we were in Indonesia and my older sister traveled away to boarding school for the first time. (Becki was 14 years old; we were in a brand new country on the other side of the world away from anything familiar; and the boarding school was about three thousand miles away.) The margin of her devotional was marked with "7/13/87 Becki" and marked again on the day she called "6/25/12 Marty, Sara and girls departure for PNG".

Here are the things she highlighted:

"It was hard to let you go:

To watch womanhood reach out and snatch you

Long before the mothering was done

But if God listened to mothers and gave in,

Would the time for turning loose of daughters ever come?

It was hard when you went away - 

For how was I to know

The serendipity of letting go

Would be seeing you come home again

And meeting in a new way 

Woman to woman - 

Friend to friend."

"Being better at smothering than loving... the parting cannot happen without inward bleeding."

"We are often hindered from giving up our treasures out of fear for their safety. But wait. Everything is safe which is committed to our God."

"To hold things loosely, that He might reign without a rival."

Who do you see in this picture?

I see superheros who have and continue to model Jesus through their obedient lives. Even when it hurts the most. Even when it means "letting go". 

And so I praise God for my superhero parents. They have and are still showing me how to let go. And I have a lot of letting go in my future. He's good like that though, isn't He? I will continue to pray that He helps me to serve Him with open hands.