Letting go

By David Crim

Releasing our children to missions is the right thing for parents to do.

When she was about 6 years old she told her mom and me that she wanted to be a missionary. It’s not that we didn’t believe her or that we doubted that God could call her to missions, but neither did we feel we needed to help her start the application process just yet. When I was 8 years old I told my parents I wanted to be a New York Yankee. Sports were a big part of my family’s life when I was a child. Almost every Saturday afternoon during the summer, Mom made us sandwiches and we watched Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese call the play-by-play action of Mickey, Whitey, Roger, Yogi and the rest of the Yankees. It made sense that I would want to follow in their footsteps one day. After all, they were my heroes.

Nathalie, on the other hand, often had contact with missionaries. We have many friends who have served as missionaries. Her own grandparents were serving at the time as missionaries in Wyoming, and by the time she was 7, we were too. She had the opportunity to rub shoulders with missionaries at church camp and to learn about them during Vacation Bible School and Mission Friends. It made sense that a child her age would want to follow in her heroes’ footsteps.

As our daughter grew and matured, however, we saw clues that she may have known more about her future than her own parents. As a young teen, while many of her friends were spiritually fickle, Nathalie was spiritually sensitive. More than once she awakened us in the middle of the night to confess to us a bad attitude or behavior that she had committed during the day. We noticed in her a deep compassion and concern for others. She ached from the spiritual deadness in her friends and lived for mission trips. I guess I tried to deny it, but in my heart I knew that sooner or later, Cindy and I would one day put her on a plane bound for a far away place.

God gave us some practice at sending her to unknown places when we took her to college. Oklahoma Baptist University is far from Cheyenne, Wyoming. My eyes still get moist when I rewind the tape in my mind. We had hugged and cried on the steps of Kerr Dorm. As we drove off, I looked back for one final glimpse of the child we were leaving behind. It was a long teary-eyed drive back to Cheyenne but we survived and finally got used to the fact that our first child was now a young woman. We had moved into a new stage, a new relationship with Nathalie. We set her free to fly with her own wings.

It may be a worn-out cliché but for us it was true — adult children tend to come back. Nathalie moved back home after graduation. We had moved to Nashville. By then, Nathalie’s musical talent had blossomed. We didn’t blame her for moving back home. Nashville is the place to be for budding musicians. We — or at least I — had forgotten about Nathalie’s childhood dream of missions. But wouldn’t you know it, God placed us in one of the most mission-minded churches we’ve ever known —The People’s Church in Franklin, Tenn. Very quickly Nathalie caught the missions bug again. The day came when we did put Nathalie on a plane bound for a far away place. We had survived releasing her to college, this time we released her to Central Asia for two weeks. Looking backward in time, we know now even this was just more practice for us.

Nathalie fell in love with missions during those two weeks. The next year she struggled with many things: a tough relationship, wanting to break completely free on her own again, making her way in the music business, and her love for missions. We talked a lot about what it means to follow your heart, what it means to discover God’s will. Cindy and I wanted Nathalie to break free on her own too, but we also look back with gratitude to the two years she lived with us. Our work as parents is not done when our children become men and women. In fact, we have discovered that some of our best work as parents has been accomplished with our two adult children. We all discovered together the secret to knowing God’s will; it’s knowing God intimately.

At the same time that Nathalie’s heart for missions grew, so did her opportunities in music. Producers heard her work and liked it. Musicians contacted her to record backup vocals for their projects. She was hired by The People’s Church as a youth ministry intern and given the responsibility of planning and leading the ministry’s worship event for the 300-400 students who attend each week. A successful manager in contemporary Christian music took her under his wing, giving her advice, helping her develop her skills, and challenging her to write. As a dad who loves to see his children succeed, I was thrilled.

Yet, Nathalie was more concerned about fulfilling God’s purpose in her life than she was advancing her career. When her church announced that they were sending a team to work with IMB missionaries in Kosovo, Nathalie’s heart and head turned. Over the next few months, as we prayed together, God made it very plain that He wanted Nathalie in Kosovo. In spite of the fact that most people she knew in the music business begged her to wait, Nathalie refused to listen to human reason. Instead, she listened to her heart, where God was speaking. Cindy and I had concerns, of course, but we were not going to stand in the way of what God wanted to do in our daughter’s life. The music business will still be here when she returns, if that’s what God has planned for her life.

So, on Sept. 1, 2003, we put Nathalie on another plane headed for a far away place. Yes, it hurt to put her bags in the car that morning. Yes, when we walked into the airport I had a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit. Yes, I could hardly speak to tell Nathalie how much we love her, how proud we are of her, how impressed we are by her commitment to Christ, because I don’t talk and cry very well at the same time. Yes, Cindy and I held each other and cried as we watched her walk through security and out of sight down the concourse. But we were not only crying because we missed her already, we were crying because parents cry when their kids do great things.