I never really to the time to be thankful for the stability in our lives or realized how much I truly loved it until the past few months when my little pocket of the world started to shift......some small little tilts and a couple of seemingly gigantic drops and turns.
Ecclesiastes 3 tells me "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace."
I know it's true, but I'm not so good with change.
The biggest, most obvious change around here is that M is gone. There's an M sized hole that exists right now. Our family space in this place we call home has been forever altered. That almost sounds too dramatic a statement to make about a child that has 'just gone to college'. Trust me, I hear it all the time. And yes, at some point, he will make it back to this house, and he will sleep in his bed...........but I will tell you this, it will never be the same again. I simply don't have words for what it feels like for this mama to have a son in college. It's a bit different for me because of the whole homeschooling factor. I never chose to homeschool my kids to completely separate them from the world. That was never how our homeschool operated anyway. But, especially for me with M because he was and always will be the first, every step he took and achievement he got was also mine.....when he graduated from elementary to middle school, his teacher did too.......then on to high school, and his teacher got to go there too.......seriously, I think that I was more excited and relieved than he was when his college acceptance letters started arriving. You have no idea what stress was lifted from the shoulders of this mama/teacher/principal/school counselor when there was proof written in black and white that I hadn't managed to screw this whole homeschool thing up! But now things have changed......he's off to college, but I am not. I am so excited for him!!! But it's so strange to be left behind.........to go from a front row seat, to the nose-bleed section.....headed for just reading about the whole experience in the newspaper. That part is a bit different for me than for traditionally schooling moms. I'm actually ok with that part. He's been pretty much on his own as a dual enrolled college student for a couple of years anyway. What I haven't quite adjusted to is the the simple fact that I miss him. I really like him as a person. I miss him showing up in my room late at night to chat; I hate that he won't be texting, "mom, you want to join me for lunch?" It hurts my heart to know that I may, in fact, never get that text again. I don't know what the future holds, but I know that it will never again be like it was just a few short weeks ago when all three of my kids slept in their beds in my house just about every night. When he does make it home, it will be to visit............and he will be different. He won't be the teen that left my house. He will be the man that he is becoming every moment of every day. I'll always be his mom, and he'll always be my baby......but it's all too clear to me that it will never be the same again. So I've given myself permission to mourn that that season of my life is over. That doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to the seasons that are ahead.....just giving myself permission to remember and acknowledge what was and that it's ok, maybe even great, that I loved it so much that I miss it terribly.
Yes, this is definitely a season of change around here. Maybe I'll write about some other of those changes soon. For now, I'm going to sleep.
Amy
No comments:
Post a Comment