MARIA CURREY|CONTRIBUTOR Much of motherhood is wisdom taking flight in hindsight. Prayer was the cocooning to my firstborn’s arrival—praying to get it right, to raise our baby in all the ways God desires. I remember driving home alone one evening, anticipating the arrival of this sweet child. At a tender twenty-two, my spirit sought answers, assured success, wisdom, and grace for this little heartbeat within. The comforting protection of God’s Presence filled my prayers, but in a different way from which I yearned. “Father, please help us to guide and raise this little one’s heart,” I cried. With clarity, my mind’s ear heard, “Maria, you two are just the shepherds of this baby. I am this little one’s Father and always will be. This heartbeat belongs to Me.” It was 1988. We didn’t know who was growing within, a girl or a boy, dark-haired like Daddy, blue-eyed like Mommy? We were soon to tumble head over heels in love. Our precious firstborn, a little girl, was born to us on a blistering hot August day. In a dramatically miraculous entry, saved from the clutches of near tragedy, I met her after an emergency c-section. Her expressions so like her Daddy’s, her little eyes searching my face, her ears tuned to my voice, her coos the sweetest melody; oh, to cocoon her in protected peace! Growth in a Chrysalis However, life in Christ is not a cocoon but a chrysalis. No butterfly takes wing without a complex and even painful transformation. So, it is with parenting. God, as the infinite Father and Creator, designed delicate creatures to symbolize much what our own children experience while becoming the next generation—a becoming like Him that will not be finished this side of heaven. Next came our second child, a towheaded, blue-eyed boy, who was as inquisitive as he was quick on his feet. Two and a half years later came the youngest, another son, whom we call our man of mirth. All three different and yet inescapably a mixture of us and God’s masterful design. Born into a military family, these three each have their own birthplaces as unique as their personalities, a full country triangle represented: a Washingtonian, New Yorker, and North Carolinian.  The chrysalis of each involved years of development, regular challenges faced from babies to toddlers, preschool to elementary, hormonally charged middle school into high school interests, with faith more greatly formed and owned, college choices made, and life then continuing beyond.  Each place we moved posed challenges, our oldest experiencing thirteen schools in her twelve years prior to college. Different homes and military installations, friends who came and went, many whom they left with tears and promises to keep in touch. What shaped, molded, and made their wings stronger? Mostly the hard places, the walls which their wings pushed against to eventually fly...