I'm a mother. That means I worry, probably too much, about my children. I care deeply about their welfare. I would read any book, follow any formula, pay any amount of money, pray any prayer and even become omnipresent if it would protect my children from evil. Unfortunately, not even my presence can keep them from harm. When it comes right down to it, my greatest fear is that harm will come to them either by accident, by their own choice, or at the hand of some malicious adult they should have been able to trust.

About a year ago, this point struck home in Technicolor. During a service hosted by the youth at our church, a teenager ready to start her senior year at our church academy stood at the microphone and told her story. She'd grown up in a home where both of her parents loved Jesus, loved each other and loved her. They gave her every advantage, including sending her to a private school. She sounded genuinely grateful. A nice Christian teenager from a nice Christian home.

Then she explained how, during the last 11 months, she had kicked a drug habit. Suddenly she had my undivided attention. While the congregation cheered her sobriety, and rightfully so, I froze to the pew in disbelief. How did this happen? I wondered. I listened carefully to the details of her testimony. She grew up in our church, attended Sunday school and was dedicated to the Lord as an infant. Looking around, I realized that at least some of the people sitting in church that day were also present when she was dedicated. They promised her parents to assist them in raising her to fear the Lord. Who failed her? Her parents? The body of Christ? Her school? Her own failure to take responsibility for her actions?

The question became uncomfortably personal. At that moment my son, Michael, 3, sat in Sunday school, soaking up stories about Jesus. Bethany, 1, played in the nursery--probably charming one of the volunteers out of yet another cookie. Those precious children have two parents who love God and teach Sunday school. Like the parents of the teen who told her story in church, we're doing our best to raise them right. And we're counting on their Sunday-school teachers and other adults we know at church to augment our influence. But what's to keep either one of them from standing in front of the church in a dozen or so years and telling the same story? My heart ached.

I took a deep breath and thought about some of the parenting advice I had collected through the years. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist at Cloud-Townsend Communications near Los Angeles, says that if you want to become an effective parent, work on your own character first. It makes sense to me. If I can't even control my own behavior, how can I expect to influence the behavior of my children? But will my children turn to drugs because of inconsistencies in my character?

Dennis Rainey, director of Campus Crusade for Christ's FamilyLife ministry, says the best thing a husband and wife can do for their children is to love each other. I love Jesus, and I love my husband, Mark, but our children are at very physically demanding ages. Much of the time, I'm tired.

These are the "Velcro" years. Some days, Mark comes home from work and peels the children off me so I can get up and make dinner. On those days I wish they weren't quite so attached to me. In the meantime, I try to stay engaged when I'm with them. We read books and build train tracks and swing on the swings. However, I also understand the priority of disengaging long enough to look over their heads and into the eyes of their father, my husband, protecting that relationship first. It's a tough tightrope to walk. Will my marriage survive the child-rearing years? Will my children resent me for feeling wiped out by parenting?

And then there's the analogy comparing football to parenting. Right now, I'm the quarterback. I determine where my children will go and what they will do when they get there. Even now, at times, I relinquish the role of quarterback, allowing them to make more choices and take more responsibility for the outcomes of those choices. By the time they become teenagers, I expect to retreat to the sidelines to become their coach. I'll still call the plays and say my prayers, but I'll let them take their turn at quarterback. And I have the option to bench them.

When they turn 21, I will reluctantly drag myself off the field and into the stands, allowing them to coach their own lives. I'll have to stifle the Monday-morning quarterback urge. Their lives become theirs, not mine. But in preparation for that day, am I turning over enough--but not too much--control to them at appropriate intervals?

And I thought about the story of Jesus and his disciples meeting the man who had been blind from birth. "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" they asked Jesus in John 9:2-5.

Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me, as long as it is day; night is coming, when no man can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Then he healed the blind man.

One of the jobs God has given me to do is parenting. And I must do it to the best of my ability, making every day count, because I don't know how many more days I have before the inevitable happens--someone or something tries to hurt my children, and they have to make choices, in my absence, about what to do next.

God has no grandchildren, only children. My children will learn about Christ through my example and my words, but eventually they must come to Him by themselves. They must decide whether or not they will trust Him to forgive their sins. I can encourage them in that choice, but I can't make it for them.

So, who sinned, this teenager or her parents, that she should become a recovering drug addict? The question is irrelevant. Through her tears, she explained that when she regained her sobriety and sought treatment, her family and her friends from church and at school welcomed her back with open arms. Today, their love and support supplies the strength she needs to remain drug-free.

I'm reluctantly arriving at the conclusion that I can't shield my children from encounters with evil. I confess my fears daily and thank God for giving me all the resources I need to be the mother my children need me to be. And I pray that He'd cause me to live out the reality of my faith in front of them on a daily basis. Instead of trying so hard to keep my children from evil, the greater challenge might just be to love them through their successes and their failures, to give them a safe place to live out the life God has called them to.

The congregation stood again to applaud the teen's sobriety. On her way back to her seat, her mother stepped into the aisle and embraced her. The scene was touching, a vivid picture of the reconciliation Jesus provides for us because of his death on the cross, the victory we can live out in the presence of our brothers and sisters in Christ because of His resurrection. Three cheers, I thought. Jesus is present and the body of Christ is functioning the way it was designed to. She now has a safe place to live out her sobriety.