“I want to come home.”

I find some of the most powerful moments in my relationship with Jesus come through conversations with my own kids. A few days ago my daughter face-timed us from a sleepover, and as her voice cracked, I knew something wasn’t right. She slowly stuttered, “I..I’m just feeling a little homesick.” As we reassured her that all she had to do was say that word, and we would come get her. It took all of two minutes, before she finally broke down and sobbed, and said, “I want to come home.”

From the time Ainsley was born, she didn’t need me. She slept through the night at one week old. She didn’t want to be coddled or rocked, just arched her back until we laid her in her crib. She thrives on standing out, and works so hard to follow all the rules. Her goal is to meet and exceed expectations. She’s my kindred spirit. I have worked the last few years to build safe places for her to be vulnerable and weak. If it’s a puzzle, she doesn’t want help. If it’s homework, she’ll hide it before she’ll admit she doesn’t understand it. Not knowing, not understanding, not being capable means she is less than. When I picked her up, she couldn’t stop crying, and apologizing. She didn’t want to upset her friend. She didn’t want to inconvenience us late at night. Yet, she needed to come home. And she hates to need.

How many times do we as adults live like that? Sure, it’s more natural for us type-a, performance-driven, overachievers, but we’ve all been in that place. The scariest moment is when we run out of ourselves. We wander so far into life doing our best, proving ourselves, and then sometimes we hit a wall. Even as Christians we exhaust ourselves living life “For God,” that we forgot He never asked us to do that. His desire is for us to do life “With Him.” John reminds us in the New Testament that “Apart from Him we can do nothing.” This past year, I’ve started declaring not only can I not do anything without Him, I don’t want to.

As I held my little girl in my arms, I felt her tears. I felt her surrender, and I reminded her that I was so proud she was brave enough to say, “I want to come home.” My Lucy Kate told me this week that in one of the shows she was watching they said, “When you surrender to the fear, fear wins.” Sometimes fear overwhelms us and leaves us stuck; stuck in our loneliness, stuck in our sickness, stuck in our relationships or even stuck in our sin. This year Jesus has been teaching me to be brave enough to approach His throne with boldness, and like my little girl, to be brave enough to say, “I want to come home, home to your peace, to your will, to your best.”