Caleb turns eighteen on Thursday.
Our baby boy all grown up. Man that was fast! Life spinning faster, harder…more intense. Graduations, birthdays, milestones to mark the rapidly changing landscape of our lives.
Nothing stays the same, an oxymoronic statement that can’t be proven, but certainly true. Life is ever shifting, adapting, overcoming, failing, falling, frustratingly slow and then breathtaking and out-of-control fast!
The rise and fall of seasons, colors, images and smells flying past as we wind our way through the parenting years of life. Each beautiful moment priceless and perfect, followed by months of monotony and survival.
How can we remain and they move on?
What anchors a parent to the reality of life when everything and everyone is a changing? I’m convinced it’s the presence of love that makes the home a ‘constant’. Not where you live or eat or drive, but the real presence of unconditional acceptance and grace… that spirit of love and hopeful expectancy is what makes our homes… “Home”.
Changing all the time, our kids… our lives are radically different from one year to the next. Urgently driving a taxi from one sports practice to the next… school pushing out private lives, we adapt. Soon, our tween-teens move past us, needing space and identities all their own. Leaving us to absorb the extra margins of life, living close but not hovering in their emerging adulthood.
Soon, they need the ‘push’ of leaving our nest. Heartbreaking and beautiful, we watch as they stretch their forming wings and frantically beat at the air of life. Slowly gaining confidence and skill as they navigate the wind currents and storms.
It’s change, and change alone that we can count on as parents. Sharing our love in each season of our lives, making our homes the bastions of peace and love they need is all we can do after a certain decision-making stage arrives.
Leaning on our faith, and the constancy of our creator… we gain perspective and purpose. Stronger for the experience, wiser and more patient we watch.
Life is a glorious circle, full of unique and unmistakable glimpses of the divine, balanced by the foolish and fantastic. It’s too much of an adventure to miss, and I wouldn’t trade any of the moments so far.
This spring, as graduation gowns are donned… let’s be sure to un-clench our hearts and blow out a long… steadying… breath. Change really is beautiful… and would we want it any other way?
