If you have children, are you a fretting parent? I’m mainly chilled out, but I’ve also been known to—as I call it—panic pray. As my children got older, I started worrying about all the things they might face, all the things I hadn’t taught them, all the ways I’d need to apologize to society because we probably don’t wash our towels often enough, or—far more seriously—that they wouldn’t make it home.

Then I read an excerpt from How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success by Julie Lythcott-Haims. She asked, “Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life to protecting them from life, which means they’re not prepared to live life on their own?”

While that gave me a bit of perspective, another question from God, the author of the Bible, kept popping into my mind: “Do you really think you love them more than I do?” (see Matthew 18:10).

Oh. That’s right. These children are just on loan to me from God, their heavenly Father who promises that he has good plans for them, that he will be with them always, that he will guard them with his angels. My job is to teach them about God and about life. To remind them they are fully qualified to handle the challenges that each stage of life presents, that I’m excited to see God’s plans for them unfold, that I can’t wait to see how they will be lights in their slivers of this dark world.