The Gift I Didn’t Want to Give My Kids

My seven-year-old LOVES gifts. It doesn’t even matter what is inside—the idea of ripping open a package intended especially for him thrills him like nothing else. As a mom, I love giving him good gifts. He’s so easy to buy for because he loves almost anything—especially when I wrap it in paper I know he will love. 

But at the beginning of last year, God asked me to give my kids a gift that I did not want to give them. Part of the reason I struggled was because I saw it as anything but a gift. 

It started at the end of January. On one dreadful day, my dad was airlifted to the hospital after suffering a massive stroke. That very afternoon, my mom—who had struggled with Parkinson’s disease for twenty-two years—also entered the ICU with a serious lung infection, having aspirated liquids. I got word from my siblings, as my husband, kids, and I live and serve on the other side of the world. That very same day, I came down with Covid—which kept me in bed for days and also restricted our family from getting on any planes for nearly three weeks. 

It was like an avalanche of grief and asking hard questions of God. Why was it all happening at once? 

An Unexpected Gift

As a mom, I ached for what this season of pain meant for our kids. What I wanted to give them was the gift of fun, relaxed moments together—snuggles and read-alouds and tea parties and crafts. Instead, they had a mom who was physically sick and emotionally undone.  

When I was finally well enough, I prayed through my grief and pain with a friend. I began to see that the gift I wanted to give my kids was simple but still desirable—like a carefully selected toy wrapped in just the right paper. They’d love opening it, and I’d love watching the delight on their faces. But, like nearly every gift they’d ever been given, it would also wear out quickly, and they’d want something new. The paper would be torn and thrown out, and the toy would sit, no longer valuable or useful. 

God began showing me the better gift he was entrusting me to give to my kids in that season. It was unimpressive from the outside; the paper didn’t at all look like something they’d be interested in. But, as they opened one part of it, another part remained unopened, and so with the next. They kept coming back to it for days and weeks and years, and each time, there was more to be unwrapped.  

That “gift” was the grace to grieve and lament well. 

The Messy Middle

I have only begun learning how to grieve well as an adult. I remember reading the psalms of lament in college and thinking, “How could the psalmist say these things to God?! I would never talk to God like that!” I really thought I needed to pull myself together first—that being grateful “in all circumstances” (1 Thess. 5:18) meant that I could never weep in pain and ask hard questions before God.  

Yet, as my husband and I began to walk through what felt like an unending string of loss and grief, I realized the significance of Jesus being a man well-acquainted with sorrow, who has borne our grief.[1] He understands our suffering and invites his people to come to him—right in the midst of their sorrow and struggle.

So, over the course of the following days and weeks and months, I let my kids watch me cry and hear me call to God, even when I didn’t have answers or a “bow” to wrap up my pain. I let them walk with me through the struggle as we learned together what it meant to trust him, even when it hurts.  

The Valley of Weeping

One of the passages that I have come to often is Psalm 84, specifically verses 5-6:

    Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion. 
As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools. 

The Valley of Baca can be translated “Valley of Weeping.” In the days and weeks surrounding the sudden death of my dad and the long, painful death of my mom, my kids got to watch me walk through a long and dark valley of weeping. They watched their mom in her weakest moments. But—by God’s grace and because he held me when I had not a sliver of strength left to hold onto him—he allowed those days to be a season where my kids saw him in new ways. They got to watch as I longed for and talked about—more than ever before—the realities of heaven and that day when Christ will redeem all things. Somehow, that place of weeping and weakness became a place of life-giving springs; a place that showed my kids that Jesus is safe to sit with and cry with and ask hard questions of. 

Held Together

It has now been a little over a year since both of my parents passed away in the span of a few weeks. I still don’t have many answers for those moments where it felt like I was gasping for air. I still don’t have a beautiful bow to tie on the end of the story. But, I have kids who, on my hardest days of grief, have said things like, “It’s okay, Mommy. God hears you when you call to him. You can talk to him about how you’re feeling.” Or “Remember, Jesus sees you, and he knows you’re sad. You don’t have to hide your tears from him.”  

Those are hard-won truths my little people are already able to articulate. And they came through deep, dark valleys of pain and struggle. Had I tried to just hold it together, to give my kids easy answers or hide the hard journey of learning to grieve well, they would have missed so much. Maybe I could have mustered up enough strength to keep doing all the crafts and activities and read-alouds. But I would have missed this opportunity to point them to the only strong One when mommy was so weak. I would have missed showing them how to run to the arms of Jesus again and again—the One who holds us together when our world is falling apart. 

Some seasons, we will be given the gift of unhurried time and building sweet memories with our kids. But there will be others where we’re barely keeping our head above water. We can let our kids see that, in every season, Jesus really is enough. He is the One in whose presence there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore,[2] yet he also knows our pain and weakness intimately and invites us to come to him—not just in spite of our struggle, but right in the midst of it.[3] Let’s give our kids a gospel picture that shows them that, no matter what we may face, he is the safest and surest place to run.  

[1] Isaiah 53:3

[2] Psalm 16:11

[3] Hebrews 4:15-16