Yesterday, my youngest daughter Juliana turned 22. Instead of birthday cake and laughter, she was in an operating room having emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix.
And just like that, I was reminded again: no matter how old they get, no matter how many miles or years separate us from their day-to-day lives, our children never stop being our babies.
I have seven children.
My oldest is 29.
My youngest is 10.
I’ve got two boys still in the nest — 10 and 12 — and the rest are out flying, soaring, stumbling, birthing, parenting, living full grown-up lives of their own. But don’t let that fool you. The truth is, I’m still parenting them all. In different ways, quieter perhaps, but still wholly and fiercely.
Yesterday, as I prayed for my baby girl in the hospital, I remembered another moment from less than a year ago — July 1st to be exact — when I almost lost my son Levi.
He was 18 at the time, skateboarding in Kansas City. A fluke accident. No helmet. A moment that shifted the axis of our entire family. I was on the phone with emergency dispatch while Craig sat in the street, cradling Levi’s bleeding head in his lap, as blood streamed into the storm drain. My youngest son, Rowan, dropped to his knees in a prayer posture, swaying, eyes closed, lips trembling with petitions. Gabriel sat beside him in silent, urgent meditation. The brothers had arrived at the scene first. Their screams of horror echoed beyond the street and into the heavens.
That moment was so violent and raw that time itself collapsed.
I remember being told that Levi’s skull had cracked 11 times — in the most dangerous places. I remember hearing that he might not walk again. That his brain was swelling. That the outlook was grim.
But I also remember the miracle.
I remember holding his hand in the hospital room as machines kept him alive, and feeling that he wasn’t fully in his body. He was there, but not. Watching.
And I said — no, commanded — out loud: “Levi, get back in your fucking body. This is no time to float around.”
I said it not as a desperate mother, but as a woman of war, who has seen some things, who was calling a soul back from the edge.
And I heard him reply, clear as day: “Mom, I’m fine. It’s all okay.”
Of course you’re fine, I shot back, because you’re in spirit form. But we’re not fine down here.
We need you.
Now get back.
And he did.
In that sacred, surreal moment I saw, in flashes like Polaroids, the future that lay ahead. I was shown the days, the weeks, the months, and even years to come. And I was given a message that this was exactly how it needed to be. That our last-minute detour to visit him — rearranging our road trip to Niagara Falls — was divinely orchestrated.
He would have been alone had we not come.
And things would be different.
He had two paths.
In crisis, I’ve found the hand of God more intimately than in comfort. My faith isn’t a shiny, soft thing. It’s forged in these moments — bloody, brutal, blinding — and yet wholly filled with grace.
Being a mother has brought me to the edge of life and death more than once. But it has also pulled me into a deeper faith than I ever thought possible. Each child has been a teacher, a mirror, a puzzle, a portal. They’ve broken me open and stitched me back together, all without trying.
Motherhood is not a job.
It’s a transformation.
It remakes you — limb by limb, cell by cell, prayer by prayer.
I think of Juliana now. She’s 22. An adult by any legal standard. But yesterday, when she was wheeled into surgery, I was back in the delivery room, holding her swaddled body, singing lullabies. No matter how old they get, there’s no milestone that unhooks them from your heart.
This is the paradox of parenting: the goal is for them to leave. And yet every piece of you aches when they do.
You start off with sippy cups and skinned knees. Then one day you blink, and they’re driving off with boxes in their back seat and your favorite mug in their hand. You feel pride and devastation at the same time.
Someone once said that parenting is just the long process of learning how to say goodbye.
I don’t know if it ever gets easier. But I do know it gets deeper.
There’s something sacred about first children. They are the ones who shift us from self-focused beings to people who suddenly carry the weight of a universe in our arms. Nothing changes a life quite like your firstborn.
But it’s the last child — the baby — who turns the final key on a chapter of parenting. Their departure ushers in the empty nest. And nothing prepares you for that quiet.
My youngest recently said, “You’ll miss me the most, Mom.”
He’s not wrong.
When the older ones started leaving, there was always more to do, more little ones at home. The baby’s nap. The kindergarten pickup. The teen who needed help applying for their first job application.
But when the last one goes, they take the noise with them.
The joyful chaos.
The spilled milk.
The endless questions.
The giggles and sibling arguments in the backseat.
Gone.
The house doesn’t just grow silent — it shifts.
It becomes something new.
And so do you.
But here’s the thing they don’t tell you, with the last child, you finally get to be the parent you always wanted to be.
You’re more relaxed.
More present.
Less worried about every little thing.
You’ve let go of the Pinterest parenting.
You know how fast it all flies, so you savor the bedtime story, the kitchen dance party, the weird joke they want to tell you twelve times in a row.
And the youngest, oh, they know how to soak it in. They’ve watched their siblings leave. They’ve seen the tears. They’ve noticed the proud smiles and the bittersweet hugs. They know what’s coming. And you do too.
But until that day comes, you hold on.
You hold on to the moments in the car after wrestling. The deep talks at night. The way their hand still reaches for yours sometimes.
And you pray. Not because you’re afraid, but because you know now, more than ever, that love is not a guarantee of safety.
You pray because you’ve seen blood flow into drains.
You’ve seen your daughter cut open on a birthday.
You’ve watched you baby be brought back from death after just coming into this world.
You’ve stood in the ER with your two-year old and screamed at attendees taking notes.
You’ve picked your baby up off the ground from being hit by a car in the alley.
You’ve stood at the crossroads of spirit and body and demanded your child come back.
You pray because you know you can’t do this alone.
My faith has been beaten, bruised, built, and reborn through mothering. It is gritty and full of questions. But it is also immovable. It has seen too many miracles not to believe.
Now I’m a grandmother.
A new portal of love has opened.
Grandbabies bring a different kind of tenderness. It’s less about survival and more about presence. I see my own mother in them. I see my children in their eyes. And I watch, from a distance now, as my kids become parents.
I hear their fears and struggles, and I don’t correct them. I just nod. I’ve learned how much more powerful it is to witness someone in their parenting than to try to “fix” them.
They’ll learn.
The way I did.
Through the late nights.
Through the heartbreaks.
Through the moments when their child calls out “Mama!” in the night and they realize — no one else is coming. It’s all them.
I wouldn’t trade a single moment. Not the hospital beds. Not the screaming. Not the gutting goodbyes or the tear-stained milestones.
Each of my seven children has carved new room into my heart. Some rooms were filled with light. Some with fire. All were sacred.
To mother is to carry a thousand invisible stories in your bones. It is to walk daily with ghosts of who they used to be, while loving fiercely who they are now.
And as they grow, and go, and come back, and go again, you realize; this job is never over. It just changes forms.
So today, on this Sunday of gratitude, I give thanks:
For emergency surgeries that remind me of the fragility of life.
For skateboard accidents that cracked skulls and split open faith.
For children who pray without prompting.
For moments where spirit and body meet in mystery.
For messy kitchens and quiet rooms.
For laughter, pain, and the unbearable beauty of watching your babies become their own people.
I give thanks for it all.
Because motherhood has not just taught me how to love others more — it has taught me how to return to myself. A self more grounded, more whole, more connected to God than ever before.
And if someday, when it’s just me and Craig in this house, with the quiet stretching long into the evening, I hope I’ll remember:
This was never a house of loss.
It was a house of launch.
And all that love — it didn’t leave.
It just grew wings.
I hope there is something for you here today.
As always loving you from here,
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Reba Spike On Unsplash
