Letting Go

Letting go.

My oldest son, left for school for another year. He and his dad are driving to Arizona. I am so thankful that they have this time together. 36 hours of driving can lend itself to wonderful conversations and just being together. It is a long drive. Together as a family we have driven cross country. The changing landscapes are breathtaking. There is beauty everywhere , even all the way across Texas!

My feelings are conflicted. This is a bittersweet time. Of course, I am so happy that he has found a school that he loves and is thriving at. It was time for him to go, yet I wanted to have more time . A summer redo would be nice. Not realistic, but nice. This was a hard summer for us. He will be 22 this month. A young man.

My job is done in a way. He is his own person with his own thoughts, hopes , dreams, joys and difficulties. God created him and knew him before I did, entrusting his dad and I with his life. Have we measured up and served God well?

The letting go is hard because there are things/parenting moments I wish I did better. I wish I did different. Each joy, each moment, each struggle has been done with a love that only a mother knows. It hasn't always been a soft nurturing easy love. There have been tough love moments too. Tougher than I ever could have imagined. We are working on coming full circle. "Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." Corinthians 13:7

In the book The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran writes:
"And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you, and though they are with you, yet they do not belong to you.
You may give them you love, but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable."

I love my son. It is time to let go, continue to be that steady loving parent and let him become the man God has intended him to be.



Namaste,
Maureen