Separation Anxiety from God
I have separation anxiety for my new granddaughter.
This surprised me. I expected to feel love and excitement. I expected to miss her when I don’t see her. But I didn’t expect this deep pain in my insides when I haven’t seen her and been with her for a significant amount of time.
I remember having this feeling with my own newborns–that terrifying, longing ache whenever an older lady at church scooped my baby out of my arms, or when felt forced to I drop him off at the nursery (in the old days, nobody kept their babies in a church service). I felt separation anxiety on dates with my husband, and I felt guilty for thinking about our baby the whole time.
A mom’s baby love is just so strong. It didn’t diminish over the years. Whenever I had a baby or preschooler and we would lead a retreat or a camp or go on a vacation without our kids, I always experienced epic longing and panic. The prevailing idea was that leaving your kids sometimes was important for their development and important for the marriage. I’m sure that’s true, but it was never easy to drive away from them. And I never stopped thinking about them when I was apart from them.
Moms and grandmas are always thinking about their kids.
They’re shopping for them, texting them, talking on the phone, or waiting for a phone call. Everything they see and do reminds them of a particular child.
“He would love seeing this.”
“She will want this–I’m getting it.”
This is still my life.
I imagine that God feels that way about us.
He is anxiously waiting to connect at every possible moment. We’re always on his mind.
He’s ready to reconnect, no strings attached, at whatever time we can come.
Maybe that’s why old people sit around and wait for something to happen. Maybe they don’t want to miss the phone call or door knock and find out later that someone they love tried to connect with them, and they missed it.
We’re only four weeks into this grand-parenting thing, and we’re already rearranging our lives at the drop of a hat if it means seeing our granddaughter.
How much more does God wait for us to check in? What does he rearrange for us?
Well, the cross, for one. That was a big rearrangement from his original plan for connection.
God is jealous for us.
That sounds bad, but it’s not. If you’re a parent or grandparent, you know the jealousy feeling when other people who also love your kids less get more time with them. You don’t begrudge anyone their time. You’re grateful that other people recognize how amazing your kids are.
You just don’t want to miss out on being with them.
God is jealous for our time and attention. Just like us. We parents and grandparents want more of our kids. We want as much of their attention, their love, their thoughts, and their activity as we can get. We don’t want to miss out on any of it.
So we maximize our together time and minimize our time apart. We schedule vacations and mandate family dinners. We lie in bed with them at night to talk and pray. We share family stories. We unpack our fears and strategize with one another. We confront and forgive. We share.
We pay the price for the time we enjoy with them. We work fewer work hours, maybe even lesser jobs or no job–or we work more when they’re busy doing things without us. We work while we watch practices. We sew costumes after they go to sleep. We spend our evenings sitting at the kitchen table quizzing them for tests and painstakingly planning papers with them. We live in the grocery store and the kitchen–buying, stocking, preparing, serving, cleaning up. We spend years of our lives driving them places, listening to their music, starting and re-starting difficult but important conversations. We bring them to church and model what following Jesus looks like, even when we blow it.
We recognize that relationships are easily broken, so we are very jealous for their time.
This is how God feels about us.
It’s up to us to maximize our time with God. We must make the investments and the sacrifices of our menial to-do lists because he already sacrificed everything. God longs for us when we are separated. Because he’s holy and gracious, he always welcomes us with open arms. No chastisement. No guilt. Just love.
Just like a grandparent, only perfect.
“Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”–Exodus 34:14
related blogs & prayers:
A new book: The Compassion Storybook Bible
21 Parenting books you can trust
Parenting quotes from books you should read
A Parent’s prayer from Romans 12
A Parent’s prayer (for God to work in my kids)
A Prayer for the lonely parent during the school year
