It was only yesterday you let go of my index finger and toddled across the second story veranda of the Colegio Evangélico Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, just outside the apartment of your great-great-grandpa Saword. A block from the beach, the salty breeze tangled your already curly hair into a golden mess of delight.

It was only today you said, “okay, mom, gotta go! See you in a bit” and walked out the door, satchel slung over the shoulder full of books and and fun things for your English class, your curly hair still flying out behind you in a shock of fun.

We lived every day together of those 13 years, but I feel like I hardly remember them. Were you ever actually 7 and 8 and 9? You’ve always been just you, a vivd personality; precise age seems irrelevant. Except now I am sensing that inevitable strain, pulling us simultaneously together and apart. We talk woman to woman now, you’re almost my own height, your insights and talents and intellect impress and delight me daily. But we’re moving apart. You hardly need me now in the same way you always used to. Simply put, you are growing up.

If I was a normal woman, my next line would be something to the effect of “and I am having big feelings about it.” But while fun to read, it would be a lie. I am having no big feelings. I am instead sensing the gentle, quiet peace that comes when all is right in the world.

This is good and this is right.

Who am I to dare to hold you back? Who am I to cling to your hand, pretending it is still chubby and sticky with peanut butter and jam and meanwhile it is gracefully reaching out to the world, like a ballerina poised in 4th Position.

Motherhood is a forever a letting-go, a lifetime of pain in bearing children. The sooner we accept that just as “I am not my own” is true, “they are not my own” holds equal veracity. Some of us have had to lose children to realize that God has gifted us the joy of temporary caretakers only. My pain and my grief are just that—my, me, I. But motherhood is not about me. It is about gently blowing the damp wings of our new little butterflies until they are strong enough to take to the sky.

I love the expression in Spanish for giving birth–dar a luz–to give light. We give them light, physical light on the occasion of their first startled cry into the cold, bright operating room. But does not life merely follow the law of first mention of motherhood? Doesn’t motherhood, at its core, rest on this single philosophy: to give our children light? This is precisely why we nurse and feed and love them, this is why we disciple and discipline our children, this is why we read them true (not necessarily referring to nonfiction, but rather in the sense of morally true) and beautiful books. Spiritual light also comes through us beginning at the earliest days of God’s Word is like a Hammer and Kenneth Taylor’s Bible Pictures for Little Eyes. This is our job, to be light givers. And instead of mourning or wallowing in self-pity when they begin to leap after the Light on their own, it should instead drive our hearts to the floor of God’s Throne Room in absolute adoration and thankfulness.