Job description clarification and blessed release

Curt and I went to the homeschool convention this past weekend. Together. Just the two of us. In Red Deer. Alone. I can't remember the last time it was just the two of us alone together but now that it's over I'm thinking that we were maybe missing out a little by not sneaking away every now and then to just have some extended uninterrupted conversation. There are so many things I want to blog about especially considering that so much time has passed since my last entry, but this is *one* of them.
Ephesians 2:10 (New International Version) says:
10For we are God's workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.
I was sitting in a "Part Two" session at the homeschool convention when that verse was brought up by the speaker. When she read the verse I automatically thought of *myself* (as we all do i suppose when we hear that verse). God is talking to *me* in that verse. "I am God's workmanship...". The speaker went on to use the word "masterpiece" in the place of workmanship... and it was then that i realized that she was talking about our children being the workmanship and masterpiece of the Lord. How many years have I been a mother...and all this time I've been reading the Bible as if it is directly speaking to me... but not letting it sink in that it is also speaking individually of each of my children? It was then that my faulty thinking hit me dead center. I somehow had the idea that as God formed me and worked in me and changed me... I would work in/with my children. So wrong. My children are God's masterpiece. Not mine. At that moment, a memory from the past week came flooding back. I was driving with the kids from the pool, Darren was in the front seat and the Christian radio station was on. The chorus of a popular song was repeating. It referred to Christians as being the body of Christ. :
"If we are the body
Why aren't His arms reaching
Why aren't His hands healing
Why aren't His words teaching
And if we are the body
Why aren't His feet going
Why is His love not showing them
there is a way Jesus is the way."
Darren had looked at me and said "Mom! This song is so powerful!" He went on to explain the lyrics to me and what they meant to him. I was impressed that he would be able to grasp the concept and articulate his emotions so well.
When that memory came back to me, i realized that God was revealing ways in which He was working in Darren. Although i will play a role in my children's Christian maturity, God is also at work in each one of them. There will be conversations of which I won't be a part. Those conversations will be between God and my child...alone. These children are not mine... they're God's. They need to follow Him. Gratitude, relief, sorrow, a lifting of a burden i wasn't supposed to be carrying in the first place. It is a blessed release when you know He will continue to carry the burden. May God give me the grace I need through these pre-teen/teen years to give each of my children a blessed release into the care and keeping of a Heavenly Father who cares enough to remind me that we are working *together*.