Releasing them...

The first day back to school could be such a bitter-sweet moment for parents.  Of course you are happy that they are progressing and that they are doing what they are supposed to do:  grow up.  However, it's also the day when it becomes clear that the sleepless nights you'd thought would last forever as you held your fussy infant in your arms are nothing but a distant memory of a time that will never come back...

When I was a young woman, I didn't understand why my parents wanted to hold on to me so tightly?  It was truly a mystery why they didn't want me to go anywhere!  As a parent now, I totally get it.  It is hard to release them, isn't it?  But that's exactly what we have to do:  let them go.  If we don't, we harm not only them, but ourselves as well, because we make them the object of our idolatry.

That is a hard truth to swallow.  I don't want to let go of the hold I have on my children...but I cannot allow my sons to become my idols.  Therefore, I must release them...I must let go...

Above all, I must trust that I am releasing them into the most qualified hands, the hands of their Maker!  I must trust that the same unending love, mercy and care God lavishes on me, He will lavish on my babies too!  I must trust that no matter what, they are loved by their Heavenly Father just as much as the Heavenly Father loves me...and that must bring my heart the peace I need to release my tight grip.

The weak rays of sunshine hit my face through the window.  It's a rather chilly late August morning, and the distant memories of a summer that is closing intermingle with those of an ending era.  I watch my growing boys walk away from me without looking back, without even waving goodbye...sigh...  That is the right course of life, however, and for that I Praise the Lord, even if I have to wipe away a runaway tear as I look down at the fingernail marks left on the palm of my hands...