In that moment, staying quiet didn’t feel like trust. It felt like letting something important slip through my hands. In my humanness, I worried about his safety and well-being. And if you’ve ever lain awake at night wondering, Did I say too much? Did I not say enough? Then you understand that emotional back-and-forth. Sometimes, when we want to get something off our chest, waiting doesn’t seem like the best option.

When my children were younger, I don’t think I would have used those exact words. I would have said I was trying to be a good mom: guiding them, protecting them, and helping them grow into who God created them to be. And all of that was true in my heart at the time. But now that they are adults, things have changed.

I listen more. I listen to their childhood memories, to what they carry with them, to what mattered to them. Sometimes they were things I expected them to say, and sometimes they said things that surprised me. Over time, though, I began to notice something: my children shared the same experiences, but they did not experience them the same way.

It reminds me that no matter how carefully we try to shape outcomes, we are not the ones who ultimately write our children’s stories. I write about this in Parenting Beyond the Rules: Raising Teens with Confidence and Joy. The tension begins to shift from managing outcomes to examining our hearts.

There is a kind of control that disguises itself as responsibility.
It sounds like:

Those desires are not wrong. They come from a place of deep love. If we are not careful, though, control quietly takes the lead. We begin to believe that if we say the right things, enforce the right rules, and carefully create the right environments, we can secure a certain outcome. And when things don’t go as planned, we feel it deeply. It sometimes feels like failure or fear.

If I’m honest, many times what I called “being careful” was really me leaning on my own understanding, trying to make sense of things I couldn’t fully see. But Proverbs reminds us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” I draw from this verse often, because living it is harder than it sounds.

Friends, our understanding feels immediate, logical, and responsible. But it is also limited. We need to remember that control manages behavior while trust shapes the heart.

If I could go back and sit beside my younger self, I wouldn’t tell her to care less. I would tell her to trust more, not in herself or in a method, but in the Lord who sees what she cannot. Because our children do not belong to us. They are entrusted to us, and there is a difference.

Trusting God with your children doesn’t mean you become passive. It doesn’t mean you stop guiding, correcting, or leading. Remember, your role was never to be all-controlling, but to be faithful.

There were moments I got this right, and there were times I didn’t. I tightened. I spoke when I should have waited. I pushed when I should have prayed. I’m sure, as a mom, you can relate. But even in the places where I leaned too far into control, God was still at work. That is something I see more clearly now than I ever could then. And if I can spare you some of the common pitfalls in your parenting journey, it would be this: trusting God takes courage, especially when the outcome is unclear.

Trust is harder than control because it asks you to release outcomes you deeply care about. It asks you to believe that God is working in ways you cannot see. It asks you to let your child wrestle, grow, and sometimes struggle without rushing in to fix everything. And that takes courage, most parents don’t even realize they need.

Trusting God wasn’t always a feeling. Often, it was a quiet prayer whispered in times of uncertainty: “Lord, I don’t know what You’re doing in this situation, but I choose to believe You are at work.”

There were times I had to step back and let my children make decisions I wouldn’t have chosen for them. Not because I didn’t care, but because I knew they needed to grow in discernment. Honestly, in my heart, I knew they would learn when they experienced the consequences.

There were also times I stepped in firmly, because love required guidance. A child left to their own devices can lead to devastating outcomes. Knowing what to do requires listening to the Lord’s leading. Keep in mind, the Kingdom way is not passive parenting. It is not controlling parenting. It is discerning parenting.

If you are in the thick of parenting right now, trying to get it right, trying to do your best, trying to raise children who love the Lord and walk in truth, pause for a moment. You are carrying more weight than most people see, and you care more deeply than you can always explain.

And in the middle of all that responsibility, I want you to hold onto this: keep the end in mind. You are not just raising children who obey you. You are raising adults who will one day make decisions without you. There is more being formed in the daily decision-making process than you can see.

Stop and ask yourself:

• Am I teaching them how to think, or just what to do?
• Am I building trust, or just enforcing compliance?
• Am I pointing them to the Lord, or positioning myself as the final authority?

You can influence a child’s environment for a season, but you were never meant to control who they become. Because one day, they will grow up. And when they do, they won’t just remember what you taught them. They will remember how it felt to be taught by you.

There will be decisions you make as a parent that your children won’t understand at the time, or maybe ever. That’s okay. Part of parenting is being willing to lead with conviction now and explain with humility later. I have had conversations with my adult children where I’ve said, “Here’s what I was thinking at the time,” or even, “I wish I had handled that differently.”

Those conversations matter to your child, and they build relationships and deepen trust with you. They remove roadblocks and become bridges for other meaningful conversations. It shows our adult children that growth never stops.

The Kingdom way of parenting is not about getting everything right. It’s about walking closely with the Lord as you raise children who, in turn, are learning to do the same.

What I see now, looking back, is that God was working in ways I couldn’t see at the time. There were moments I thought I needed to step in, when in reality, He was already at work beneath the surface.

Isaiah reminds us, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways… As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” That truth has become a quiet comfort to me. It reminds me that I was never meant to carry the full weight of my children’s outcomes. Only the responsibility to walk faithfully as their mother.

Where might you be holding too tightly right now? And what would it look like, not to step back in fear, but to step back in trust?

onnie Albers is a mother of five and veteran homeschool mom who has used her public relations background to help shape the homeschooling movement for twenty-seven years. She has spent much of her adult life as a homeschool mom and mompreneur with an outreach and ministry to parents through her speaking, writing, and various leadership roles. More recently Connie’s newest book, Parenting Beyond the Rules by NavPress, outlines positive approaches to parenting today’s teenagers. Her enthusiasm for helping others navigate social media led to her taking a post at Social Media Marketing World. Connie’s mission is to equip moms to live their lives with confidence and joy.

Connie and her husband, Tom, have been married thirty-four years and have homeschooled their five children, all of whom continued their studies and graduated from the University of Central Florida, from the beginning.