This article originally published in the Feb.-Mar. 2010 issue of Deeper. For more articles on faith and family or to subscribe via e-mail to the Mom’s Moments and Deeper Newsletters, go here.

My son, Toby, turned five on January 12^th. Our family laughed over pizza at his favorite restaurant just as the whole of Port Au Prince crumbled to the ground. We didn’t learn the news until the next day when the pictures spilled from our T.V. along with a painful realization. During the chaos and death, we were celebrating life. The irony felt like a stone in my heart.

I wanted to shield Toby from Haiti’s devastation– tuck him in bed, kiss his unharmed head to sleep unburdened. But instead of peace, the thought gave me shame. I remembered Everson, a five-year-old-boy, pictured lying on a piece of cardboard in the Haitian dirt. If Everson could survive the horror in Port Au Prince, my son was strong enough to know about it. He could fight for Everson. He could fight for Haiti.

I copied a few pictures of the rubble and the one of Everson, and sat down with Toby to explain earthquakes and tragedy. It was short and simple- nothing to paralyze him in fear. He listened, awed by the extreme destruction. I prayed aloud, thanking God for the safety and comfort we enjoyed and asking Him to help the people in Haiti who had neither. Toby listened, and then ran off to play. That was that.

Before bed, we performed our usual nighttime ritual, each family member praying in turn. When we got to Toby, he thanked God for his favorite things: trash trucks and his family. Then he added “God, You know that ‘earthcrank’ in Haiti? I’m gonna need you to clean that up.” It was completely un-elegant, utterly simple. The kind of prayer that penetrates the heart of God.

A few days later, we bought aspirin and cold medicine and added it to the large collection boxes in our church lobby, bound for the under-supplied Haitian hospitals. Toby and his younger brother, Charlie, dropped our gifts into the bins with pride. Later in the car, I saw Toby’s face looking thoughtful in the rear view mirror. “What are you thinking buddy?”

“I’m praying for Haiti in my mind,” he said. My heart skipped a beat.

Like every parent, I am familiar with protecting my kids. Nothing feels better than burying their faces in my chest against any sign of doom. Only I don’t want to raise children who bury their faces when trouble comes. I want to raise children who will stand. Children who see disaster, hunger, or pain, and storm the gates of heaven like mighty warriors.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14 (NIV)

My favorite part of this new blog design is the tag line: “Choose a destination, run fast.” The only problem is me not having a destination.

I spend a lot of time writing about my boys. This blog may become the longest book ever written, and if the climax is Toby and Charlie’s passage into adulthood I’m gonna go ahead and delete myself from your Google reader to spare you the ennui. Being a mom is the purest part of me, the easiest cause to wholly pledge myself, but I want to give more to my kids than devotion. I want my boys to see meaning beyond themselves. I will have to show them in my own life.

Recently I met with some girlfriends to talk about our purposes. We are over the cusp of thirty, and bubbling with energy and passion. If we blink once we will be forty, ten years spent on something. What will it be? Micro-managing our kids? Jogging the saddle bags off our thighs? Twitter? We decided to figure out God’s plan before we are blinded by our own busyness.

After our meeting, the mystery of my purpose itched around in my brain, clouded by all my failed ventures. You know how there are people that can touch anything and have success? I’m the opposite. I can throw myself head first into something and ferociously tank it. I’m not an awesome runner despite years of dedicated training. I’m not a good salesperson, marketer, or administrator. I liked my blog so I went all the way and bought my own domain just as my traffic plunged downtown. I’m like Abe Lincoln, but without the final redemption of being President.  

I dreamed out some really fun destinies, but they all required a great turn of fate and conveniently culminated with my own personal success.

Do you remember Andi Hawkins? They are building a theme park in Orlando based on her best-selling fantasy novels. Weren’t the characters so engaging?! I heard she is donating all of the profits to World Vision. Isn’t she a complete inspiration? Or…Can you believe Andi Hawkins was the first woman to ever win a marathon while pushing a baby jogger? She is on the cover of Runner’s World eating whey protein brownies with her two super-happy kids. Isn’t she such an awesome role model for healthy motherhood? I’m following her on Twitter…

Dreaming made me feel bad for how little I have actually achieved. There are so many things I haven’t started–things I haven’t finished. My under-performance slumped over my shoulders like regret.

“God what do you have for me to do?” A thought came to me. I stared at the mirror wondering if I would be satisfied with my life if I were just a wingman. What if I were made to support others– never destined for greatness, for fame, for glory? What if it were just me and my big mouth speaking life into my friends as we walk unceremoniously toward heaven?  Would I look back in ten years unashamed?

I got excited. I thought of all the people around me, and the joy I feel enoucarging them, praying for them. God’s breath filled the space I carved for my own glory and I welled over with peace.

What better purpose could I teach my boys? Toby and Charlie, I want to see you move mountains, but don’t be deceived. There is nothing unsatisfying in the sky God opens for you. It might look plain before you take off, but when His wind lifts your wings you won’t even care if it makes you invisible.

But that is precisely what happened. I said, “Who died?” and Toby burst into tears, spraying us with worms from the can I’d opened.

“Did somebody die?” and “Am I going to die?” and “When am I going to die?”

Greg and I were completely unprepared. He was crying so violently, so out of nowhere. Greg scooped him into his lap to calm him down. I sat beside them both stroking Toby’s arm, searching for a possible trajectory. How could he even know what “died” meant?!

“Am I going to die?” he said again.

Greg and I looked Toby straight in the eye and answered confidently “No!” [Greg] and “Someday…” [me]. What?! I shot Greg my subliminal indignation. Liar liar pants on fire.

Heartless messenger of evil, Greg shot back.

Clearly we had no plan. We sat for a moment, dumbfounded, watching Toby sob. Neither of us had a clue where to start, so we opted to board the Joy Bus through the valley of death like good Christian parents. “Let’s focus on Heaven! and Living Forever With God!”

“Will it hurt when I die? Is Charlie going to die? How long will I be dead?”

“Heaven is super-fun! God is awesome to be with!”

He cried so hard that the hangy thing in the back of his throat wiggled with every wail. “How am I going to die? I don’t want to die…”

It was more gut-wrenching than Beaches and Bridge to Terabithia together. How could we explain death and eternity to a four-year-old? Ten minutes before he was yelling “Come wipe me!” and now he was Socratically dissecting his own fate.

We whizzed through all the death scriptures we knew. “…conform to His death…?” “The wages of sin is death…?” Then we remembered this: “…Jesus, who has destroyed death…” That phrase became the pot in which we planted our integrity. We could look him in the eye and say “Dying is really scary, but don’t worry little man, Jesus wins.”

Then we all went to Sonic for a cherry limeade.

Just when you accepted either a) your chromosomal superiority or b) your (look out…) remarkable parenting skills, your second child springs from the womb yelling “no” and laughing while you try to snuggle his limp-bodied, kicking self into some semblance of the Willow Tree carving on the dresser.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you tell him, “I guess you didn’t know that breaking all the glass votive holders was dangerous. That yelling ‘Cookie!’ the entire time we ate out (though you were, in fact, holding a cookie) was irritating. That shrieking ‘Down! Down!’ as I carried you from preschool every day was embarrassing. It should look like this: you kneeling beside my heart-shaped, featureless face while I tenderly stroke your wooden cheek. Yes, that’s it! Isn’t that what you meant to do?”

Then your second child locks eyes with you and smiles very dimply and peachy while reaching one toe into the street just a touch, just a little weensy bit. “Charlie!” you say, “No sir! Go to the naughty spot!” You wave your arms and squinch your eyebrows so the neighbors see you are not permissive or negligent or incompetent, though you yourself aren’t really sure.

You scrutinize your care, your attentiveness, your goodness while he sits in time-out. You look at his tiny bean-of-a-self enduring this formality with the remorse of an artichoke. What am I doing wrong?

He grabs his wiggly feet and sings, “He ha da Whole worl in His han!” and “biddy biddy beebees, in his han!” until you realize the answer is nothing. What is flawed is the statue itself, because as moving as it seems, it isn’t as delightful, as marvelous, as perfect as this stubborn, extraordinary soul.

God don’t let me change him!

“Is it a paper cut?” I ask because I forgot my go-go-gadget magnifier for microbooboo locating. “Mo-o-o-omm-y-y” he opens his mouth into such a wide cry that his lips barely reconnect for the m’s. “I think your gonna make it buddy,” I say. Greg returns to his screwdriverish super-project while I rinse Toby’s finger in the kitchen sink.

Our underconcern makes him anxious– as if some day he will puncture an artery or catch on fire and his parents might keep on weed-eating or browning turkey meat while he bleeds to death on the kitchen tile.

This is the part of four that baffles me. At two, I knew I could scoop him up and hold him for just a skinned knee. It felt so right reassuring him, letting him cry it out however long he wanted. Now I waffle between coddling and indifference, searching for a proper balance that won’t land him in therapy twenty years from now.

Even more perplexing is his simultaneous need for manhood. One minute he wants gauze wrapped around an indiscernible wound, and the next he is following his dad up the ladder with a real screwdriver in his fist. I furiously dig through his plastic tool set for a safer toy replica wondering who to blame for his inconsistency, him or me?!

What I want is to have him both ways. I want him to be tough, independent, capable and I also want him to need me. I let him go with a wary unclenching of hands, then give him whiplash yanking his little self right back. Independence requires something of both of us that still feels foreign. I know I should lead and encourage him, but that requires a hint of risk, of danger that I’m too afraid to allow. The nurturing part is so much easier.

I think this will be my battle always. Like in the book “Love You Forever” when the old mother crawls through her grown son’s apartment window and rocks him while he sleeps. Everything about that page is disturbing and muddled. You want to yell through the watercolor “Cut the cord, lady!” But when you sit on the bed next to a pair of chubby, bare feet you can’t very well cast blame. It’ll take everything you have to keep your own feet from clambering up behind her.

I am so proud of how you’ve grown. But when you stand in your big four-year-old bones and words burst from your mouth like bubbling candy, I just can’t believe it. I still see the itty-bitty you that cried if I walked in the bathroom to pee.

Four years of you. The best four years of my life. Happy Birthday, little man.