Surrendering to God’s Plan For My Kids

Dave and Ann Wilson remember becoming parents for the first time. Their parenting journey got off to an unexpected and challenging start. Finally, the doctor came and he said, this was a really traumatic birth.

It was really fast. We're afraid your baby has a skull fracture. And I'm in that room all by myself. And I said, God, what's happening right now?

Where are you? This isn't what we hoped it would look like. This is what we had expected. And in that time, I felt like God was asking me, can you surrender this child to me? And that's a hard thing to do. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. A big part of parenting is recognizing that your kids don't belong to you. They belong to God. And so the right first step is to surrender your kids to God.

We'll talk more about that today with Dave and Ann Wilson. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. I've had people over the years who have told me they think it's really smart. If you're going to write a book on parenting, wait until your kids are grown. Or 50 years old. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking my kids are grown.

They're all married. I'm still not sure I'm ready to write that book on parenting. Me neither. But you just did. We did. What are we thinking? Well, I mean, our oldest is 34. We figured, OK, that's long enough. You guys have just finished a book called No Perfect Parent.

That was mostly about Ann. I was sort of the perfect parent, but I was married to an imperfect one. I'll say amen to that. You're really, looking back on your parenting years, lots of lessons learned that you're just thinking, I wish somebody had told us these things when we were starting the journey, right? Yeah. And I think that I'm not sure that I could have heard it and put it into action, but I do wish that I would have had a mentor.

I think I had that at time to time, but I needed somebody continually to be pouring into me. See, I was a camp counselor for six summers. Oh, so you're an expert.

That's what I thought. I thought I could be a parent. I was a camp counselor for six summers. I mean, what else is there? That's harder than anything. You take the kids down to the creek, you play around for about an hour, then you take them back to the cabin and it's nap time. I mean, I've done this.

It's simple. And so I really do think I went into parenting with the idea that that's what you do. You just show your kids a good time and you have fun. I don't think I had much of a vision for what I was supposed to be as a dad or what parenting was supposed to look like, other than keep them safe and get them to 21 and make sure that they're in decent shape when you get them back.

That's not as bad as my goal. I was like, oh, my kids are going to be happy and popular and athletic because that's what my parents were like growing up. That's Anne's perspective. And I was scared to death because I don't remember ever being around my dad. So I really didn't know what parenting looked like.

My mom was great and loved me. But when we brought our first son home, I was I was really scared. I was like, I need this book. Where's that book?

You need something, you know, like what we just wrote. I remember one time before we had kids, we were at Anne's family and they have all these two brothers, sister kids all around. My nieces and nephews. And I remember picking up Jim's boy, Ted. And, you know, I was watching her brother, you know, throw him up in the air and I'm like, oh, that's what dads do. I had never done this in my life. I'd take Ted, I'd throw him up and throw him into the ceiling. Bam!

And he starts grieving. Everybody's looking like, what are you doing? I'm like, get me out of here.

I don't know how to do this. And Anne looked at me like, who are you? And that's what I thought. I wasn't much better because we're both the youngest and I babysat a little bit, but I never really liked it. And so when we have this child come into our house, we're like, what do we do with this child? I had a misplaced confidence. I mean, I think I thought, how hard can this be? Parents have been raising kids for years.

I'm a smart guy. This can't be that hard. And yet I had no idea how profound this was. I think a lot of parents look at this and go, I could really mess this up.

And they get a little freaked out. In fact, one of the things you guys talk about, you really start this book with a look at the expectations we bring into parenting. But take us back when you'd been married. How long before you found out you were pregnant? Five and a half years. And we were planning everything.

We were on staff with crew. We had finished seminary. We had been married long enough. So we're thinking, OK, it's about time we thought we're ready. You had kind of held off for a little while. We're going to have some years together, get these things out of the way before we have kids.

Yeah. And I'm kind of an achiever. And so I'm thinking, OK, you know, I'm pregnant. I'm going to make sure that I do all the right things. So my first thought was, well, what should I do?

I should learn from other women. So I got myself into this small group. We were still in seminary and I was newly pregnant. And I thought, OK, I'm going to go to this Bible study for moms and I will learn from these moms what it's like. So I remember this morning because I was nervous.

I'd never been to a mom's Bible study. I dressed in this really cute outfit because I wanted to impress them. I wasn't really showing yet. And I thought, oh, I wish I was showing. And I walk into the door of this Bible study and it was like World War Two had gone off in the room.

There were diapers and swings and bassinets and screaming, like screaming and crying. And I look over and this young mom, I'm thinking, what is she wearing? Like, it looks like she just got this shirt from the bottom of the laundry basket that's been there for like three months. And not kidding, she smells because she has spit up.

It's rolling down her shoulder. And the other thing I thought, oh, my goodness, she has a Cheerio stuck in her hair. And but she seemed so happy.

And all the moms there, I'm like, do they not see the chaos that's going on? And Bob, I was so prideful and I was thinking, I will never, never be that mom. So it didn't freak you out, like, oh, this is what's ahead for me. It was like, no, I won't allow this. Oh, yeah, like these girls need to get their pride.

Girls, where's your pride? And so, yeah, I walked in there and I did learn, but I had that pridefulness thinking this will never happen to me. And all of it happened to me.

I was every one of those women in that room. I remember being in restaurants where kids were being fussy and just thinking, can you not control your kids? Can you not get them just to act normal? Right. And then you take your kids out to restaurants years later and it's like, no, you can't control them.

Right. I am that dad. I am that mom.

We all know how to be great parents until we have kids. Did you did you guys intentionally start your family? Did you say at year five, OK, now's the time. Let's do this. Let's have kids.

We actually did. Yeah, we were very fortunate to say that, you know, we're around year six. Let's try and get pregnant.

And fortunately, and I know this doesn't happen for everybody. So we were very thankful to God, but we got pregnant and we honestly did think, OK, we've got this marriage thing figured out. Now we're ready. And then we had kids were like, wow, you're never ready.

Yeah. You know, not only do you not have parenting figured out, but now you realize you don't have marriage completely figured out. Like, wait, our marriage really isn't that great because now we have this added stress to our marriage. Did you have the mommy longing during that five year period before you became pregnant or were you contented just to be? I was content and fearful because I'm the youngest of four and I all of my siblings had had kids. And I think I was afraid of who I would become and who was I. I knew who I was as a single woman and then I knew who I was as a married woman. Who would I be now as a mom? And I think I was a little afraid of losing who I was. Were you ready to be a dad? I don't mean ready, like prepared. I mean, were you?

OK, this is the time and this is what I want. So let's have kids. Yeah, I was very excited. I mean, it wasn't like I got married in day one. I was like, I can't wait to have kids. But by years five and six, it was like, we want this.

We get a chance to leave a legacy. And yeah, we were super excited. We had prayed for, you know, years and then we got pregnant and I mean, we couldn't wait. And was your pregnancy glorious or challenging or what were the nine months with CJ like?

Not bad. Back then, too, I was really into fitness. And so I'm like, oh, I will be strong and fit. And it's so funny, all the things that were so important to me now that I look back and think, really, did that matter that much? But that's who I was at the time. But he was born three weeks early and that did surprise us. And so tell me about when you went into labor. Maybe Dave should share this part.

Why is that? Because he was obviously sleeping hard when at 37 weeks I'm trying to wake him up. And I told him, Dave, my water broke. We're having this baby today, tonight. Yeah, I mean, it was, Bob, it was a crazy night. You know, obviously we knew that we're going to have a baby in the next month.

We did not know if that CJ was going to come early. And, you know, I'm the Detroit Lions chaplain my first year. Wasn't that our first year? At the end of our first season. And you were only 28.

Yes, 28 years old. And again, you know, I don't have a lot of dreams and I'm in dreamland and I can remember it. It's vivid. You know, we opened the No Perfect Parents book with this dream. And I'm going to add this as a preface. Dave would always come home as the chaplain and he would warm up the receivers on game day. And so often these receivers would be like, dude, you have a gun.

Like you could play. Okay, you don't need to tell everybody that. You don't need that. I told her that. So this plays into the dream. So on the night that your wife goes into labor, you're in the middle of a dream.

What's your dream? Yeah, I mean, it's two or three in the morning, I guess. And it's Monday Night Football. Right. In the Silverdome.

In your dream. Yeah, and the Lions are playing the Bears. I don't know if you remember history, but the Bears had just won the Super Bowl the year before with Jim McMahon and the Super Bowl Shuffle. And so we're playing them on Monday night. We have two quarterbacks on our roster, Chuck Long and Joe Ferguson. And I'm on the sideline like I always am as a chaplain. Right.

And it's 80,000, 85,000 people there. It's Monday Night Football. It's everything you can imagine. And somewhere in the first or second quarter, our starting quarterback gets a concussion and they take him to the locker room. Joe Ferguson goes in. Next play. He never has this kind of detailed dream.

Yeah, I never have dreams like this, but this is, I can still see it. So Joe gets sacked and hurt. On the next play. They take him off. Literally.

Literally. And I remember Darrell Rogers, our head coach, I could see it in dream. He's like looking up and down the sideline.

We don't have a third string quarterback on our roster. And all of a sudden I hear, Wilson. And I'm down at the end of the bench and I look down and I'm like, Wilson.

It's the head coach. I go, what? He goes, get in there. Suit up.

I'm like, what? You're going in. You're our third string quarterback. I literally, they call TV timeout. This is all in the dream. Get in a uniform somehow in the locker room. Come running out.

And it's like 110 because we've had no completions. And I can see walking from the huddle. I'm getting under the center.

I'm blue 15. And we have a bomb called the Jeff Chadwick, our outside receiver. And I drop back and I can see him and he's behind the guy. And I'm like, oh my goodness. And so I step up and actually Richard Dent's coming in.

He was all pro. And I make him miss. And I step over and in slow-mo I just let this baby go. And I mean, I can see the ball spinning. Perfect.

Tight spiral. That's how you know it's a dream. And I can see this ball going up.

And you can see 85,000 people standing up because they can see. Yeah. He's beat the guy. The ball's perfect. The chaplain's about to throw the big touchdown.

I don't know who this kid is, but man, he's got a gun, right? And so the ball's literally, it's coming down into his pinkies. Outstretched arms. He's at the five yard line looking over. The ball's coming down. And again, of course it's in slow-mo. And it's just about to land in his fingers.

And he's gonna score. I mean, it's like an inch from his fingers when I hear, my water just broke. I mean, that's literally what happened. And I'm like, I'm asleep. And I hear this.

And I'm like, I can hear it like in the distance. I'm like, no, no, no, no. No, no. Hold on. Hold on.

I don't even know what I've heard. But I'm like, this dream can't end. And sure enough, she's shaking me now. And she says, Dave, my water just broke. And I remember thinking, water doesn't break. It drips. It flows. It spills.

What do you mean your water? And then, of course, I woke up. And he says to me, I'm having the best dream.

And I'm like, I don't care. And then we're driving. You know, we're anxious. We're driving to the hospital.

And he's telling me all the details of his dream. While you're having contractions. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I expect my labor to begin like that. And that was just the beginning of expectations.

You got to the hospital. Yeah. And they said, okay, you're going to be here for a while, right? Yeah. The nurse comes in and she looks at me and she checks me.

She goes, oh, honey, you're going to be here at least 24 hours. Wow. And it's, what, four in the morning? Yeah. And there's no doctor.

They don't need a doctor yet. And so Dave's like, I'm going down the hall. He takes his Sports Illustrated with him to go to the bathroom. I'm thinking, oh, I know what that means. I won't see him for a while.

Yeah. And so I'm in this room all by myself. I'm hooked up to a fetal monitor. And all of a sudden, I'm watching, you know, all you can hear is the baby's heartbeat on the fetal monitor.

And you can see the tape of paper coming out. And I started having these hard contractions. And every time I have a contraction, I can see the heart rate dip and hear the heart rate get much quieter and softer. And that started to scare me. And maybe 15 minutes go by, and this is my first baby.

I don't know what to expect. And suddenly, I'm thinking, I'm going to have this baby now. And so I ring for the nurse.

She comes in and, you know, she's like, oh, geez, this dramatic girl. First timer. Yeah. And I said, hey, I have two questions. One, it seems like this fetal monitor, that the heart rate is alarming. And that really is scaring me. And the other thing is, and as I'm saying this, I have another hard contraction. I feel like the baby's coming out. And she rolls her eyes and she says, oh, honey, you know, you're just a first timer.

It's not going to be for a while. But she watches. She's looking now at that tape and the fetal monitor. And I can see that, uh-oh, she's a little alarmed.

I can tell by her face. She checks me and she doesn't even get there where she says the baby's coming out. And so she runs back. She said, I have to call the doctor.

She hasn't even called the doctor. I'm in the room by myself. And she says, she leaves the room. She says, don't push. Like, okay, I don't even know how to not push. And I yell for Dave.

Dave Wilson, get in here. I could hear from the bathroom some hysterical woman yelling my name like, uh-oh, I better close up the Sports Illustrated. And I ran down the hall and she's just about to deliver her CJ.

Wheeling me out of the room to have a baby. Wow. Everything went smooth. No, Bob, it didn't because there's another expectation. I thought, oh, well, you know, we love Jesus.

We've been praying. And no, it didn't go smooth. It was a complicated delivery. And his cord was around his neck and so they whisked him away. He was in NICU.

We didn't even hold him or see him. The doctor came in and he said, and this was a long time, it felt like, didn't it, like maybe 20 minutes, half hour, I don't even know, an hour. And in that time, if any parent has been there where you don't know what's going on, it's so scary.

And our outcome was good. And I know a lot of people have had really hard outcomes and the news hasn't been what they had hoped for. But in that time, finally, the doctor came and he said, this was a really traumatic birth.

It was really fast. We're afraid your baby has a skull fracture, which like even hearing that skull fracture, what does that mean? He said, we need to check his heart and his head. So Dave's like, I'm going to find out what's going on because the doctor left and I'm in that room all by myself. And I think every parent has come to this point where I said, God, what's happening right now?

Where are you? This isn't what we hoped it would look like. This is what we had expected. And in that time, I have felt this often in my life where I felt like God was asking me, Ann, can you surrender your baby? This child to me. And that's a hard thing to do. Because even though I hadn't even met this baby face to face, I had this love and connection that I thought, no, I'm not going to surrender him.

This is our baby. And I felt already that protective mother's heart. And I wrestled with that with God. And finally I was I said, like, what else can I do, Lord? But give him to you. And that was a hard beginning.

I don't remember talking about it at that moment, but we both had the same sense. I think every parent feels that hopefully is like, this isn't really ours. This is God's. He's a gift to us.

We get to be stewards and hopefully raise this young man or woman to know the creator who made them. But it's a moment of surrender. And it's a multiple. Yeah, it doesn't ever end. But that night, again, you think you have expectations, it's going to go, well, everything's to be easy. And from the very first second, it was like, oh, my goodness, it is out of your control, you know, and then you have to go, OK, God, I'm going to I'm going to trust you. And it was not easy.

It was the beginning. Have you had times that you've had to surrender your kids? We all have times where we we recognize this is out of my control. When our oldest after college said, I want to go to Asia and I want to do ministry in Asia. And the country she was going into was a country that can be hostile toward Christianity. And I remember when she got her assignment, the city she would be in, she sent me a text and she said, Dad, we just found out what city we're going to be going to.

The other teacher and I and said, as far as we know, we're the only two Christians in this city of two hundred and fifty thousand people. And I remember thinking, this is not the dream I had for you at your age to be going into this city where it could be hostile, it could be oppressive. And it just so happened that I was I was watching a movie not long after this about the Civil War. And there's a scene with Stonewall Jackson in the movie, General Stonewall Jackson. And one of his lieutenants asks him about his legendary composure on the battlefield. General Jackson, how can you maintain your composure on the battlefield when there are bullets whizzing by and you could be shot in an instant?

And Stonewall Jackson apparently historically said this. He said, my theology teaches me that I am as safe in my bed as I am on the battlefield if I am in the will of God. And I remember hearing that line and thinking my daughter is as safe in another country as she is in Little Rock if she's in the will of God. Harm can come to your child here. Harm can come to your child somewhere else.

If they're in the will of God, that's the safest place they can be. But as a parent, we feel the ownership, the responsibility. It's my job to keep you safe.

Especially as a father, I would think with a daughter. And it's my job to make sure that life goes well for you and it's my job. I have these expectations for how life's supposed to go. And my identity is now wrapped up in those expectations.

If it does not go well for you, that reflects on me and the job that I've done. I mean, you have here from the very first moments of life with your son a reminder from God that this is not completely in your control and that you do have to surrender this child to him. And you would think evidently I didn't quite get it because our second child was six and a half weeks early and he was in NICU. Our third son, I went into labor at 21 weeks and then I was on bed rest the whole pregnancy.

He was another three weeks early. And I thought, finally, I held this baby after he was born, the first one. But then I go back to my room as they clean him up and that same NICU doctor walks in the room and I say, no.

I do not want to see you because now I knew him really well with three kids. And he said, your son stopped breathing. And I remember praying with that last baby like, Lord, do I not get it?

Like, do I have to do this every time? And it's so funny because I've probably surrendered my kids thousands of times since then. And I think that's a good practice to get into as parents, not only for our kids, but our own lives, all the situations that we're going through because we can't control. And talk to us about having expectations, having plans.

I mean, I think at some level we ought to have expectations. We ought to have a plan for what we're going to do with our kids. How do we balance this desire to want to be the best parents we can be, want the best outcome for our kids with the fact that it's not entirely up to us? How do we deal with that? Yeah, I think it's extremely difficult because in one sense, it's one thing to surrender our own lives.

And of course, we want to do that. But to surrender your son or daughter's life is harder. I really think it's harder because I want more for them than I even do myself.

I really do. And so when I don't see things going the way I hope they would, whether it's out of my control or they're making decisions or whatever, you want to step in and control. And you want to maneuver things to get the expectation and the desire you always had to happen. And you can't do it.

It doesn't work. It actually pushes your children sometimes away. And again, like Ann said, a thousand times, probably a hundred times a day, you're like, OK, God, I got to hand CJ, Austin and Cody back to you. It's like Abraham and Isaac. You're like putting them on the altar and saying, they're not mine, they're yours and I can trust you. But that is the hardest, I think the hardest thing to do as a parent. I think, too, it's surrendering your expectations because I think we have this dream of what it will be like, of what our kids will be like. And so I think to partner with God and to say, God, what are your expectations? That's different from my dream of what my child will accomplish or what they'll be like. Because really, the more we're in tune with our Heavenly Father who created them in his image, to me now it becomes this relationship of me partnering with God and finding out who he created them to be, not me managing them into my own picture of who I am.

Yeah. And as you think about it, you know, from that night with CJ in the hospital as a newborn, you have to let go. And then you think, I mean, we're all older parents, we're grandparents. We can think of all the moments, you know, when they went to school for the first time. You got to let go. It's scary. I mean, you can fast forward, too, I can remember standing looking out the front window of our house when CJ, then Austin, then Cody drove out the driveway in a car at 16. You're like, you're scared to death. Oh, my goodness.

Right. Walking down the aisle, taking them to college, you name it. Being in the hospital when they had their own kids.

It's like every year there's a chance every day to say, I'm not in control. You are, God, I'm going to entrust my kids to you. That's so interesting, too, because I'm recalling when our son had our first grandchild, he and his wife. We are so excited when they told us and they shared it with us in this really creative, exciting way. And then even as a grandparent, you have expectations.

Oh, this is going to be amazing. And now you feel even more connected because now this is your child's heart and his wife's heart. And so when Austin and Kendall lost that first baby, I was crushed myself, but even more crushed to watch their pain. And then it happened again and it happened again.

Three miscarriages. Right. And so to watch them hand God their hearts and their hurts and their hopes, I wanted to protect them. I know, Dave, you really wanted to swoop in and protect them, but to watch God, the Heavenly Father, love, take care of and soothe their broken hearts.

That was really something. And at the end of the day, I just add this. You know, the title of the book really comes from that that perspective. There's no perfect parents. There's no perfect kids.

There's no perfect parenting process. There's only one. And his name is Jesus. He is the creator who you can trust in the middle of this imperfect parenting journey that we're on. There is one. I mean, we were going to call the book Vertical Parenting because it's really this idea of you've got to hand your kids vertically to Christ.

You've got to find life in him and lead your kids to find that way. But it ended up being no perfect parents because there is one perfect parent. Right.

And his name is Jesus. I think this idea of surrender, having expectations but surrendering God, these are your kids. They're in your hands. You do have a responsibility as parents to shape and to mold and to protect and to keep safe and all of those things, those belong to us. But at the end of the day, these are God's children.

And you capture this beautifully. I really hope our listeners will get a copy of your book, No Perfect Parent. We're taking preorders.

It releases next week. You can go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com, to order your copy of No Perfect Parents by Dave and Ann Wilson. The subtitle is Ditch Expectations, Embrace Reality, and Discover the One Secret That Will Change Your Parenting. Again, go to FamilyLifeToday.com for more information about Dave and Ann Wilson's new book, No Perfect Parents. Preorder from us online at FamilyLifeToday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY to order your copy. Again, our number is 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word TODAY. Let me just say, if you've not gotten together with other parents and gone through Family Life's Art of Parenting video series, you guys need to do that because Dave and Ann are a part of the series. There are others who have contributed to the series. It's good, solid, practical counsel on what the core focus of our parenting ought to be. The Art of Parenting video series is available from us here at Family Life. Get more information when you go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com, or order it from us by calling 1-800-FL-TODAY.

Plan to get together with a group of parents who have got kids the same age as yours. Really, the group experience is a big part of the value of going through the Art of Parenting content. Again, find out more when you go to our website, FamilyLifeToday.com. Now, tomorrow we want to talk about how critical it is for us to have the right goal in mind, the right mission as we're seeking to raise our kids. We're talking about parenting this week with Dave and Ann Wilson. We'll continue the conversation tomorrow.

Hope you're able to join us. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch. Got some extra help today from Bruce Goff and, of course, our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.