This past week was filled with many revelations and insights. I set goals that needed to be interwoven with appointments and travel plans. However, when you understand that man makes plans, and Yahweh (God) laughs, you know there will be lessons taught, and activities you will participate in that weren’t scheduled. Below is insight from an experience between my youngest and me, along with the lesson I learned from it.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not on thy own understanding. But in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path.”

“We cannot turn a boy into a man. That’s a man’s job.”

As a mother of a young man who’s just entering and just surpassed his eighteenth birthday, that passage really hits home. Because you have to let him grow. You have to let him explore.

Unfortunately, due to facets beyond my control, his father isn’t in his life the way I want him to be. I was blessed, though, to meet men along the line, godly men, who have helped direct his path, to show him how to become a man, and to be an image of what a true man is supposed to be. Men who are fathers and husbands, so they can have an image to look up to, and to look towards, to help guide them in ways that a woman cannot.

Yes, many women think that they can be a father and a mother, but we really can’t. We are the womb. We bring life. We nurture. We care. We teach emotion. When we have our emotions correct, we can teach that balance. But we cannot turn a boy into a man. That’s a man’s job.

Releasing the Reins

But it comes to a point where we also have to let them grow up. Now, yes, I’m still legally responsible. He’s only eighteen. But I also can’t keep him shackled to my hip as if he’s eight.

Different things have flared up in our home over the past couple of weeks. Things that he still desires to do, that are financially beyond what we’re capable of right now. And instead of blaming me or becoming harsh about it, his mindset has been: when he turns eighteen, he’s going to do it and still take care of me in the process.

I’m like, “That’s my responsibility.”

He’s like, “Yeah, it is.”

But that’s beside the point. What we need is what we need, and I will see to it that we have it.

The Job That Shifted Everything

School is out this week. This is his senior year. He and his friends got together with somebody and took on a contracting job, which they looped him into. My son doesn’t always do due diligence in understanding what he’s getting involved in. The gentleman he’s with, though, I have resources to check to make sure he’s with someone decent. A college‑bound student who’s looking to get into the NFL, who’s a decent player, and he’s also connected through the coach that I work with for my son. And they’re together with another person.

Twenty‑four, well, now twenty‑seven hours ago, my son changed our whole schedule. He says, “Ma, I need to do this. I know what we scheduled. I’ll be home that night.”

Mm. Night came and gone. He’s not home.

He called me this morning and said, “Didn’t realize it was a forty‑eight‑hour job. I’ll be home either tonight or tomorrow morning.”

I commented to him, “Be happy, I trust Yahweh the way I do.”

The Midnight Battle Between Faith and Fear

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of Elohim.”

Because this mother woke up at one or two o’clock in the morning, and her son wasn’t home. Her son hadn’t contacted her. The human side of me, all types of thoughts, because of information that I’m aware of, came into my head.

Who can I contact?
What should I do?
Do I put out a prayer call?
Do I do this?
Should I do that?

And then I say, “Isaiah, I love you, but you won’t do now.”

I had the book of Isaiah playing, but I needed my mind to rest. And the only way I could really rest was to hear the actual word of Elohim. So Genesis had to come back on. And I had to talk to my Aba Yahweh.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the word of Elohim. For when Adonai speaks the Living Word, your spirit can calm down. When Adonai speaks the Living Word, your soul can reset.

I’m like, “You promised me this child, so he’s yours first. Quiet the humanness inside of me. Let this body rest.”

A Mother’s Prayer in the Dark

When I went to sleep the first time, I had other things on my mind besides him, but I was so tired. That child had me up at three or four o’clock in the morning, and I had a very full day. And my prayer was:

“Aba, let me sleep and let my friends come out to play, because I have a book to finish, so I need to play with my characters and figure out how I’m finishing this story so I can finish my first draft.”

And I woke up at one, two o’clock and rolled over to an empty home. But I had to go back to sleep before my six o’clock alarm.

“Aba Yahweh, I need to rest. Stop letting my mind wander back over to my child. He’s in your care. Send Your angels to cover and protect him.”

We know where he’s at. We have that address. It’s a legitimate location. I did my due diligence. I know where my child was. It’s a verifiable house.

Let me stop taking it out of Aba’s hand and just leave it there. Aba, let me go to rest. Let me go to sleep. Apparently, I’m traveling by myself on Wednesday, so I have to turn it over. For faith comes by hearing, and hearing by His Word.

Either We Trust Him or We Don’t

“Either we trust Heavenly Father, or we don’t.”

But if you don’t have a relationship with Him, you can’t have faith.

I have faith.

Too often, we find ourselves in a position where we say we have faith, but we don’t know how to leave something on the altar. We place it under the Father’s hands, ask Him to take care of it, and then pick it back up.

What can I do?
How can I assist?

There’s really nothing we can do. There’s no way we can assist. The only thing we need to do is leave it in the Father’s hands, ‘cause either we trust Heavenly Father or we don’t.

And it was a war within me, because that’s the enemy’s trick.

“You don’t really trust Him.
You know you gotta handle this.
This is your job.
He’s your child.”

Yeah, he is my child. But he’s Yahweh’s first. He’s my second. I’m just a vessel that brought him into this world.

Releasing Him Back to the One Who Gave Him to Me

Yeah, I was given a vision of him as a man of valor. I was also given the path to follow in raising him so he would not fall far from the knowledge of Elohim. But as he grows and learns to make his own choices, he belongs to Yahweh, just as I do.

Yes, he still answers to me. But I’m not the final authority. Yahweh is.

We must realize, as parents, that our role begins to change. Not drastically. It always baffles me when parents say, “You’re eighteen, you’re on your own.” That’s such a foolish way of believing and thinking, ‘cause that’s when their minds really need guidance.

Do they want us? Sometimes, no, ‘cause they think they’re grown. But that’s when we have to loosen some of the reins we held on to them. And we start shifting from commander to advisor.

Not completely. I still rule my house. I still have certain ordinances that must be followed and maintained. But at the same time, Yahweh gave him a calling and a job. I can’t hinder that desire within him. I can’t stop the path he’s required to walk. I can just guide him and be the wind beneath his wings to support him.

Watching a Boy Become a Man

Is he going to make mistakes along the path? We all have. But I can be there to comfort and nurture him. I can’t prevent them. I can’t coddle him.

But while I’m doing that, I also have to be secure in who I am in Yahweh, ‘cause right now I’m gonna need Him to nurture me as I watch this young boy, this young man, grow into a full-grown man.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. But it’s not for me to know, for I have to get through today. Today has enough evils of its own. Yahweh has taken care of tomorrow.

But His Word can comfort me.

Thiz is Me, Cee Marie