Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. Psalm 127:3 (NLT)
As I’ve watched my daughter care for her first baby and the adoration I see in her eyes for this beautiful and perfect baby girl, I am struck by this thought:
“The way she feels right now as she holds this baby in her arms and as she gazes into those newborn eyes, is how I still feel when I look at my adult children. Those intense feelings of absolute, unconditional love never change with time.”
It’s kind of funny you know, we often can’t wait to have a family of our own. We dream of holding our newborn in our arms and contemplate all the wonderful memories we will make. Then we bring home our baby and in those first months we dream of having a night of uninterrupted sleep. Each day evaporates into a soon forgotten memory. We no sooner get one baby sleeping through the night and partially potty trained when we add another to the fold. And we start over again with sleepless nights.
We find ourselves longing for the day when we can enroll them in preschool then kindergarten. We dream about having some time to ourselves again to pursue those things that we once enjoyed before the demands of motherhood.
Soon we find ourselves culling through Thursday folders, placing all kinds of artwork on the fridge door and filling our calendars with parent/teacher meetings, soccer games and dance lessons. We begin looking forward to the day when we don’t have elementary aged children and they will be a little more independent.
Orthodontics, acne treatments and mood swings sometimes welcomes us into the middle school years. Friends become a key component of our children’s daily lives and we, as parents, find ourselves asking a lot of questions and making every effort to know who our children are befriending. The pressure is beginning regarding making school sanctioned teams, good grades and finding a niche within the school. Everyone desires to belong, no one wants to be an outcast. Our weekends and at least one or two nights a week are spent carpooling to practices, games and competitions of all kinds. These are interesting and mostly fun times. We begin to think about the day when our children are old to drive so they can drive themselves to practice and maybe drop the other children off at their practices too.
The high school years mean we have children in the house that might be as tall or taller than us and eat a lot and often. Hopefully our house is the house where everyone wants to hang out so we find ourselves feeding them too and we don’t mind. We find ourselves as parents trying to renegotiate some house rules and suddenly we need to provide a little privacy—not too much—just enough whatever that means. Now we are volunteering with booster clubs, discussing possible college destinations and what that means regarding high school class selections. We have boyfriends, girlfriends and drama. We are picking out prom dresses, prom tuxes and buying corsages. But we don’t have to drive them to practices anymore.
Whether our children attend college or not when they turn 18 the culture says they are legally an adult. More than likely we still support them financially at some level for a while but our role has subtly and forever changed. All the years we spent looking ahead to the next step, the next accomplishment, the next goal—we are there. Good, bad or indifferent we are there. Not to say we will never have any influence on our children again but it will never be the same. We raised them to launch them and as exciting as it sounded at the time I found it excruciating when it actually happened.
Funny, I have a lot of time to myself these days and I’d give anything for a Thursday folder to review or a soccer, basketball or band practice to drive to and patiently wait for them to finish. I would love to have family meals to plan and prepare and maybe some big parties to host for the basketball team. I never really wished for my children to quickly grow up because I knew all too soon they would. And they did.
The following Trace Adkins’ song brought me to tears when my husband and daughter danced to it at her wedding. It still does…
Then They Do
In the early rush of morning
Trying to get the kids to school
One’s hangin’ on my shirt tail
The other’s locked up in her room
And I’m yellin’ up the stairs
“Stop worrying about your hair, you look fine”
Then they’re fightin’ in the back seat
And I’m playing referee
Now someone’s gotta go
The moment that we leave
And everybody’s late
I swear I can’t wait ’til they grow up
Then they do
And that’s how it is
It’s just quiet in the morning
Can’t believe how much you miss
All they do
And all they did
You want all the dreams they’ve dreamed of to come true
Then they do
Now the youngest is starting college
She’ll be leaving in the fall
And Brianna’s latest boyfriend
Called to ask if we could talk
And I’ve got the impression
That he’s about the pop the question any day
I look over at their pictures
Sittin’ in their frames
I see them as babies I guess that’ll never change
You pray all their lives
That someday they will find happiness
Then they do
And that’s how it is
It’s just quiet in the morning
Can’t believe how much you miss
All they do
And all they did
You want all the dreams they’ve dreamed of to come true
Then they do
No more Monday PTAs
No more carpools or soccer games
Your work is done
Now you’ve got time that’s all your own
You’ve been waiting for so long
For those days to come
Then they do
And that’s how it is
It’s just quiet in the morning
Can’t believe how much you miss
All they do
And all they did
You want all the dreams they’ve dreamed of to come true
Then they do
Oh, and then they do
(Songwriters Jim Collins, Cathy Majeski, Sunny Russ; Published by Lyrics © SPIRIT MUSIC GROUP)
C. Deni Johnson
Right Hand Ministries 