Is your plan for your kids getting in the way of God’s plan?

"Always we need to sacrifice our own project. Like Abraham. It's not about us, but it is about God and His project for your child. We might think, this is not what I imagined before for my life, but the Lord gives you a new fruitfulness."

I sat listening to a talk at a Family Week Retreat at Benedictine College a couple weeks ago. The priest giving the talk, Fr. José Noriega, reminded us that children are a gift. Because of this, we must let go of our projects for them, our plan for how we think their lives should go. Children belong to God ultimately, not us. This might seem like a no-brainer. But in further discussion, I realized how many layers of control I want to have over the precious gifts of my children.

I am fully convinced that the Lord’s plan for my children is the best one. I know also that my desires for them could easily get in the way of their full blossoming and fulfillment. Afterall, I am a fallen human being, whose imagination and empathy is limited. Here are some ways I have reflected on how I make my own projects for my children, instead of being open to their unique gifts and the paths that the Lord may call them on.

The very first layer where I know I have had to surrender control is my fertility and desire to have children in the first place. Questions like “when should we have children?” and “how many children should we have?” are ultimately out of my control. I realized this quickly in my marriage when we wanted to have a second child. Why wouldn’t the Lord want us to have a second child? A sibling for our son?

It turned out that He did send us a second child, but not in our timing. It took much longer to conceive our second child than with our first. Then we miscarried that baby. And the next baby. And the baby after that. I have become much more grateful and much less grasping when it comes to family planning since then.

Even the sex of your children is a project to surrender — you may never have a son like you had hoped or may wish your daughter could have a sister, but she never does.

The next layer of control I have to avoid, the next temptation to turn our children into projects, is in the realm of their personalities and interests. We may want our children to be a certain way — maybe different from us so that they don’t have to struggle with our temper, or our tendency to people-please, or our ADHD.

Or perhaps we wish our children could be more like us so we could understand how they think or how they operate. But instead, they engage with the world so differently than we do, we struggle to know how to connect with them.

Another layer of control to unravel, and one that is particularly tricky for me, would be wanting our children to share our religious preferences — from the way we worship to how we live out our faith. Wanting our kids to know and love Jesus Christ, and to do that in the fullness of the Catholic faith, is fundamental. If you truly believe that Jesus is God, and that he founded a Church to give grace to your journey to Him, then of course you want your child to know Him and His Church. Where the unhelpful or unhealthy layer of control comes in, however, is when we expect our children to live their Catholic faith the same way we do.

The universality of the Catholic church is incredible. Just read the lives of the saints and see the variety of ways people can follow Christ. It is easy to impose our preferences, the things that have helped us in our faith journey, on our children, expecting the same result. A certain personal devotion, rite of the Mass, movement in the Church, etc. may be profoundly helpful for me, but may not help my teenage son or daughter.

Being open to my child’s preferences as they grow older and allowing them exposure to different aspects of the Church throughout their life, is a way to let go of making the experiences of my faith journey the only acceptable faith journey.

Finally, there is the temptation to want our children to be passionate about what we are passionate about – be that politics, or our hobbies, or the way we spend our time. Our children may present us with a new issue or pastime that we had previously written off or never explored. We should be willing to prudently engage and explore with them, even if (and especially if!) it is uncomfortable or challenges us. This could be anything from kickboxing, to engaging with the homeless, to exploring a different viewpoint on a topic such as immigration.

I’m sure there are many other ways, large and small, that I will need to surrender control. Holy Spirit, please give me the grace to see the ways I am blocking my children’s growth, and the fortitude to surrender.