My family and I were blessed to be able to take part in the Brook Hills Parent Commissioning in 2015 after the birth of our daughter. Welcoming a new child into the family is such a joyful and exciting time, but also a little overwhelming. With both of our children, it didn’t take my husband and I long to realize if we looked to our own strength and wisdom to raise them we would be in WAY over our heads. Thankfully, as Christ followers, we have a heavenly Father who sustains us and instructs us. Not only that, He gives us the great mercy of brothers and sisters in Christ to come alongside us on this journey.

This is why we are so thankful for the Parent Commissioning class at Brook Hills. Through the process, we were taught and reminded of important truths. While we have the great privilege of being the caretakers of our children, they belong first to God. We (the parents) have the primary responsibility for our children’s physical and spiritual well-being. But, praise God, we are not alone. We have an amazing faith family that partners with us to come alongside us and shepherd not just our children, but our entire family.

Through the commissioning class and the ceremony we acknowledged God’s sovereignty over our children and us, we asked for grace and wisdom, and we prayed our children would one day have saving faith in Christ Jesus. This ceremony is a vow from the parents to God and The Church at Brook Hills to raise our children in a Christ-centered home AND it is a vow to the parents from The Church at Brook Hills to partner with the families in this. My husband and I take this vow very seriously as both parents with children in this body, and as preschool volunteers who teach children in our church each week.

One of my favorite things from our commissioning was the encouragement to pick a life verse for our children and to commit to praying that over them. Both of our children’s verses are on their bedroom walls and written in their Bibles. We wanted to choose verses for them that encompassed all of our hopes and prayers for their spiritual walk.

Our son Asher’s verse is:

And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
– Isaiah 11:2-3

Our daughter Hadley’s verse is:

We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with
the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

– Colossians 1:9-10

Even on the hard days, or the days we feel like failures, we see those verses and we remember the commitment we made at the Parent Commissioning to God, to our children, and to our faith family and we also remember we aren’t in this alone.

Brittany Welsh and her husband Chris have been married for 10 years. They have been members of Brook Hills since they moved here in 2012, and they currently lead a preschool small group. They have two children, Asher who is 6, and Hadley who is 1. Some things that Brittany enjoys are staying home with her children, reading, and eating Mexican food.