By: Cassandra Armstrong
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10 (ESV)
The Hebrew word for “be still” is רָפָה (raphah) — to let go, to release, to loosen your grip.
I have been thinking a lot about parenting lately; how if you have more than one child, you don’t parent any of them the same. You can’t, not really. The age gaps, the personalities, the circumstances… they shape you just as much as you shape them.
With my first child, my only son, I went into motherhood with this mindset: I’m going to raise a child who listens. A child who minds. A child who does what he’s told.
I love him deeply. We’re incredibly close, honestly not just as mother and son, but mentally, we’re just in sync, because he seems to be the most like me, so this isn’t coming from a place of regret toward him. He didn’t “get the worst” of me. However, I did go into parenting with a kind of edge, so he got the most over-attentive me.
I would see kids who weren’t well behaved and think, I’m not going to be that mom. I’m not going to let my kids get away with everything just because they’re cute. They won’t be cute adults by coddling poor behavior. Now, I don’t disagree with that sentiment, but as a new mom, I wasn’t very good at slowing down and enjoying their joy.
I was strict. Not necessarily wrong, but strict in moments that didn’t warrant strictness. While my oldest is becoming an incredible young man, I think I missed some joy in the small moments because I was always measuring: Was that the right call? Should I have corrected that? Should I have let that go?
Then came my daughter, Scarlett.
By the time she was three, she was diagnosed with leukemia. And everything changed.
She was tiny, 20 pounds, bald, sick. Of course she was babied. Of course she was handled gently. But even then, I still required respect. I remember nurses thinking I was too much because I’d correct her, “No, say please,” or “Say thank you.”
They’d say, “She’s sick. She doesn’t have to do that.”
But I remember thinking: She’s going to survive this. And I don’t want her to come out of it without character because we excused everything in her pain, so even in the hardest moments, I still held that line.
At home, my son was still carrying a weight of expectation too. Then I became pregnant again with my daughter Emerson. She lived for eight days, and she passed away in her sleep from SIDS.
Something shifted in me.
I didn’t necessarily become softer, but I changed. I lost a certain firmness, and at the same time, I became incredibly protective and turned into a helicopter mom. After walking through cancer with one child and loss with another, I would have wrapped my kids in bubble wrap if I could have.
Then, in 2020, Hazel was born. By then, life had carved something different into me.
Scarlett was healed. My son had grown.
Then yesterday, as I sat in the corner of the room, Hazel, almost six now, was playing in her dress, spinning and creating and just existing.
She stood up, looked at me, and said,
“Mommy, watch. I can fly.”
And she leapt across the room.
Big, beautiful, fearless leaps…. And I just watched her.
I felt this overwhelming fullness, this kind of joy that almost brought me to tears. Because in that moment, I realized something; I don’t know that I would have felt that way before.
Not because I didn’t love my other children. Not because I didn’t watch them.
Rather, because my heart, back then, was always evaluating instead of absorbing.
Now, I feel it.
The innocence. The wonder. The fleeting nature of it all. It does go fast.
My son is almost 15. Life is more serious now with his plans and goals. The innocence has shifted. My daughter is 13, and she’s not saying, “Mommy, watch me fly” anymore.
I sat there thinking,
I wish I could rewind and just watch more, not differently in action, but differently in heart.
Maybe that’s what life does. Maybe it’s the trauma. The grief. The growth. The years. The way God gently reshapes us through every relationship, every loss, every moment we didn’t even realize was forming us.
I’ve been studying a theory called Leader Member Exchange, how relationships are cyclical, how we influence each other back and forth. It is intended for organizations and business, but I started to see it in my own family life:
My parents shaped me.
I shaped my children.
My children shaped me in return.
Each experience through cancer, loss, and healing shifted how I showed up the next time.
Even Emerson, who only lived eight days; she changed me profoundly. Now, with Hazel, I respond differently. I’m more present. I am more aware that every moment is slipping through my fingers whether I notice it or not.
Even the small ones.
Even the ones that seem insignificant.
Because they’re not.
Now, I can watch my son at hockey practice on a screen and just enjoy watching him exist. I can watch Scarlett read a book and notice the way her face moves. I can sit and just BE with them.
I don’t think I understood the weight of that before.
If there’s anything I would say, anything I would offer to another parent, or even to myself years ago, it’s this:
Be still.
Not just physically, but in your spirit. Let go of the constant evaluation. The pressure. The performance. The “what’s next.”
The promotion won’t matter.
The phone call won’t matter.
The endless to do list will never actually end.
But that moment? When your child says, “Watch me”? Oh….That moment matters.
Did you see it?
Did you feel it with them?
Did you stop long enough for it to imprint on your heart?
Because, one day, you’ll realize it’s gone, and you’ll wish you had.
God gave us these moments; these tiny, sacred windows into the lives we’ve been entrusted with, and we miss them when we live in constant motion.
Even in ministry. Even in purpose driven work. Even in good things. If we are not tending to the hearts in our home, truly connecting, truly seeing, then all of it is noise.
So maybe today, we take Psalm 46:10 seriously.
Raphah.
Loosen your grip.
Release the urgency.
Be still.
And just watch them fly.
Closing Prayer
Lord, I thank you for the simple moments, the innocence in our children, and the permission to be still. I pray you lead us today to slow down and truly feel gratitude for the moments that we take for granted. Give us a heart of appreciation for the simplicity and joy in those that you have blessed our lives with. I pray you help us to pause and be fulfilled in the calm.
In Jesus name,
Amen
Rooted Productions 
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