You Grow Them and Then They Leave You

We are about to graduate another student from our brood of imaginative and occasionally challenging children. They are quite the rambunctious bunch at times with thoughts and energy beyond my small little mind. They can tend to run circles around us at the busiest of times.

Someone told me that it would get easier to watch them grow up and develop their personalities and different interests. They encouraged me not to look back, but forward to embrace the rapidly passing days and the ultimate time in which they leave our house. I can say it most definitely does NOT get easier.

I struggle with their maturation. Not that they should always be little children in need of our guidance. But that they want so desperately to be grown before their time. They want to cut and burn the apron strings that held them to us, rather than slowly untie them. The kids don't understand that those strings are not to tie them up so tight they cannot leave, but rather to slow their descent in case they should lose their footing. A safety net as it were.

I understand that after the age of say, 12 years, they have developed a sense of right and wrong. They should have the foundation of beliefs we have in our home. That somewhere amidst their own form of rebellion, we still are a part of their lives - even though it might not be apparent to either of us from the outside.

Seniors and juniors are faced with so many seemingly life and death decisions about school, their education, and their futures. They are overwhelmed by the enormity of the decisions and the endless group of deadlines. I cannot keep them straight. I do not know how they can. I am supposed to be the keeper of time and dates, and plans. I am overwhelmed.

My level of overwhelmed begins with wondering if I did a good job. Was I the mother they needed me to be? Will they feel we prepared them well enough to go their own way? Are they running away? Can they plan their next few years with confidence or with fear?

With each child that leaves our house, a piece of my life and heart goes with them. There is no practice in saying, "Go and lead a good, productive christian life." It is something that must be said and prayed in practice. They have heard me say over and over that our job is to raise strong, responsible Christian adults who leave our home to create strong, Christian homes and families. But that thought has a sense of heartbreak. They no longer live here among us.

They visit, but they are somehow seperate from us. They are forging their own lives away from us. But we cannot help wanting to make their lives somehow better, despite our own limitations.
We cannot heal every hurt. We cannot make better every hard road they travel. There are times we would desire to remove the trials of everyday studying or work loads that plague their journey to being accomplished adults. But it just is not possible.

I dread the decision making of what college? What major? How much money is too much money or where is too far? I hate the inquiring questions of other parents so that they can share the decisions they have chosen for their children. Some only for the opportunity to brag, others solely for need of seeking solace from another struggling parent.

My heart aches as the senior year ends. Was this the best year or was this the year to be endured? Did the choices we made this year make things better for going away? Or should we have somehow done it sooner?

Once again in raising our clan I am left feeling inadequate and unsure. No matter how many times I have been on my knees and asked for guidance I know I am ill-equipped to say good-bye at the right time. My heart will again break.