Letting My Baby Go

I remember when we sent our oldest daughter, Laura, off to her first day at public school. Memories of her first seven years at home floated through my mind. The “play times” we’d shared. The times when I was home alone with her, playing baby dolls, and she would stop, look at me with her big blue eyes, and say, “Daddy, you’re my bestest friend.” I thought of all the care we’d given her, the time we’d spent investing in her little life, preparing her for this moment.

Of course, I knew the time would come when we would have to let her go out into the big bad world. I didn’t want to, though. I feared for her, knowing what other kids could and would do and say. I feared for her tender feelings, her kind spirit. Laura has an outgoing, friendly personality; she just wants to be friends. And I knew there would be kids who didn’t want to be her friend, who only wanted to hurt her. And that hurt me.

I hoped we had prepared her enough, second-guessed our parenting style, and prayed we weren’t sending her into a den of hungry lions. The thought of her braving this cruel new world alone tore at my heart. How many times would she come home in tears because of the biting words of another child? How hard would we have to work to undo the hurt she endured on a daily basis?

Questions, insecurities, prayers, and endless nail-biting, I imagine that’s what most parents experience in the same situation. But in the end we must let our children stand on their own feet and trust that we raised them to the best of our ability and that God will care for them where we can’t.

Is sending your first novel, your baby, off into the harsh, cold world much different?

As authors we pour so much of ourselves into our written work. We write, rewrite, polish, hone, rewrite some more, subject it to the scrutiny of an agent, then an editor, then rewrite some more. Is it any wonder that when we finally send our finished book off into the public that we are fearful? That we fret and suffer anxiety attacks? That we pull out our hair and rake our fingernails across . . . okay, okay, I’m going a bit far now.

Will they like it? Or will they laugh and say, “You call this writing?” What will the reviewers say? Will they be kind or brutally honest? Will I be called a hack? Will it sell? Or will I be a one-trick pony? A has-been before I even had a chance to be?

Today is the day my novel, The Hunted, hits bookstores, hits the scrutinizing eye of Joe Public. I fret, I worry, I’m anxious . . . but I must let it go and let it stand on its own now. It’s out there for all to see and, just like with releasing my daughter, I must trust that I did the best I could and that God will see it to wherever it is to wind up.