You belong to Him

By Karen Ridder

When my children were born, I brought each of them to my chest and whispered in their ear: “God loves you. You belong to Him.”

It was my little way to recognize in their first moments, I was their mother, but they were not mine. My children belonged to God. God’s plans for their life should come first — no matter what.

It is not an easy idea to live up to as a parent.

My four children are ages 7 to 16. Each of them is different and challenging to raise as God intended. It is a balance between teaching them what is acceptable and right to get along in the world and allowing them to be who they are, even when it doesn’t make sense to me. It speaks to something about parenting (and faith) that I think is easy to forget — God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts. (Is 55:8-9)

I get inspiration in Holy Scripture from Saint Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. A quick recap of her parenting story: She wanted a baby for the longest time and couldn’t have one. When she finally got pregnant, her husband was struck speechless (literally). The boy was born, but he was — different. He did not wear regular clothes; lived in the desert; and ate locusts. Surely, Elizabeth shed tears of frustration and fear over his choices. Why couldn’t he just be a nice Temple priest like his father?

But this was the child the angel said to call John, meaning God’s grace. This child leapt in her womb when Mary arrived — recognizing the unborn savior.

Different was right.

Giving John over to God’s plans instead of her own must have been hard for Elizabeth — but she did it. We know because John was free to become the renegade prophet who wore camel’s hair and called on people to repent. God used John to baptize Jesus.

As parents, our challenge is to guide our children in the truth of Christ and the Church to the best of our ability, but we must not hold them too tightly. When our children come up with ideas that do not make sense to us and want to follow paths we would not choose, we are right to remember they are not ours.

They belong to God.

The words I whispered in my children’s ear at their birth were not my promise to them. They were my promise to God. To trust them to him — no matter what. This trust is not easy. It gets harder with every passing year. Like Elizabeth, we are charged to give over our thoughts and plans so God’s grace can show us the beauty of his ways.

Karen Ridder is a parishioner at St. James Parish in Liberty and a convert to the Catholic faith. She graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has written for numerous publications in the Kansas City area. Karen and her husband Jeff have three sons and a daughter.