This past weekend was a life milestone for my family. My wife, Chris, and I took our oldest child, Jonathan (pictured below), off to college at Baylor University in Waco, TX.
But first, let me take you back in time ...
It was 2003, and I was at church listening to Reggie Joiner, who led all the family ministries at our church. On the stage was a large jar filled with marbles. In fact, Reggie had several jars with varying levels of marbles.
He explained that each marble represented one weekend that he had left with each of his kids before they headed off to college. It looked to me like there were a lot of marbles in his jars, and his kids were older than mine.
Now fast forward to this past weekend as we dropped Jonathan off at college. You guessed it. I lost my marbles.
I had started out with over 400 marbles! It was so many I didn't think that they would ever run out. Come on, that's over 400 weekends with Jonathan. That's almost 3,000 days ... 3,000 days!
Today, it feels like they ran out in just a few weeks.
You know, being a parent can sometimes be hard work. The days can be long. But the years go by fast ... so very fast. Two passages of Scripture come to mind.
- "So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." (Psalm 90:12)
- "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6)
Now I know first-hand that we must number our days and that our children will go.
We said good-bye to Jonathan at the campus bookstore. He embraced each of us. We watched him cross the street and walk through the doorway into his new home ... Penland Dorm. As Chris and I walked to our car, we held each other and wept.
I am crying now as I write this. I miss him. I love him. I am SO proud of him. It was time for him to go ... the time just went by SO fast ... the marbles were gone before I knew it.
Someday, I pray, he will have a jar of marbles himself, and one day, he, too, will lose his marbles.
Train them well. They will leave sooner than you think. And when they do, you, too, will have lost your marbles.
Are you numbering your days?
