Kids May Leave, But Love Doesn't

I've entered a new and strange time in my adult life, the time of the empty nest.  That time when the children that you have raised and nurtured begin to leave to find their way in the world.  And much like when I entered that phase of life called "mid-life", this has totally caught me off guard.

It actually hit me the other day after coming home from work and mowing my yard.  I was sitting in one of the chairs on my porch surveying the freshly cut grass and cooling off with a nice bottle of water, when I begin to have images play out in my mind of all those many years and my kids playing at various ages.  The light saber battles, good guys and bad guys,  and endless hours riding wheeled vehicles of all shapes and sizes around our circle drive, one particular memory was of my youngest son Noah riding his little plastic tricycle.  He would "Fred Flinstone" on his trike around the circle drive.  No matter what we did to that trike his little legs just weren't long enough to reach the peddles, and even if they had been, the mechanics of peddling just eluded him at that age.  He would shuffle along the asphalt with a grin on his face and the wind blowing his hair.  It's a good memory for me.

My oldest child Micah is in Australia going to Hillsong College for a year learning everything he can about becoming a worship leader for God, my daughter is finishing up her Junior year of high school and will be spending her entire summer working with futureVision ministries, a local mission's organization, and finding her place in the great story that God is telling, and my youngest son Noah left us too early a couple of years ago due to death.  This leaves my bride and I at home for several months all alone, just the two of us.

There is a funny little movie called "Failure to Launch" which came out a few years ago.  It's the story of a young man who is in his late twenties to early thirties still living at home with his mom and dad, and the parents efforts to get him to move out. Once he does move out, his dad, played by Terry Bradshaw turns his bedroom into a "naked room". Now I've said for years since seeing this movie that I would one day also have a "naked room", and while that has brought many laughs, one of which was at church when my Pastor made mention of it from the pulpit, today actually having the opportunity for it to become a reality doesn't really have the appeal it had before.

And once again feelings have snuck up on me that I never intended to have, nor actually wanted.  I have thought that with the kids gone from the house, it would be nice for my bride and I to have a little "alone time" as Cousin Eddy put it in the movie "Christmas Vacation", but now that it is here, I'm rethinking that.  Not that I don't want to spend as much time with Cheryl as possible, I do.  She is my best friend, but it's like without the kids around we don't know what to talk about or do.  We find ourselves most nights sitting in our recliners watching some show on television, waiting on the kids to call or update their Facebook statuses so we'll know what they are doing.  We've spent so many years with children in the home, it's almost as if we've forgotten what we used to do before they showed up.

And this is the weird part, you'd think that after almost twenty-four years of marriage we'd have it all figured out, but I'm beginning to understand now that you never do get this being married thing "figured out" because marriage is a constant changing and evolving state.  Just when you've figured out how to work together and get along, then kids show up and you are learning a whole new set of things.  You get that figured out after a few years, then they turn into teenagers and a whole new dynamic comes into play.  As you're getting a handle on that one, the kids decide that they like other kids of the opposite sex, and your head goes to spinning.  Then they leave the house, and you're left sitting there wondering what just happened.

I know that this too shall pass, and in time I will come to terms with my kids not being around me all the time. That's probably when the Grandparent phase will hit, and look out there will be new and exciting things for my bride and me then.  Right now my kids are learning about their place in the world, and what God has for them to do with their time on the planet.  After all, that is what Cheryl and I have spent the better part of nineteen years now doing; instilling in them the desire to go and find out.  It's bittersweet though, because as you train them for this, in the back of your mind you really don't ever want them to actually go.  Of course they must, how else will they become the fully functioning people they are to become if they never leave?

Even though I am uncomfortable with this new phase in my life right at this time, I'm comforted with the thought that while my kids may in fact leave the nest, the love I have for them, and they have for me doesn't. Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!