Letting go

"
The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."
Isaiah 58:11 NIV

This is the season of goodbyes as parents rush around organizing high school open houses for their soon to be graduates, their graduates anticipating with both happiness and sadness what lies ahead. It is also the season of college graduations as many watch their adult child begin to test their wings of flight and soar into the hitherto wonder of life's next chapter. 

Like a mighty crescendo, the child becomes an adult living on their own for the first time, away from the comfort of mom and dad's watchful eye, making their decisions for the first time on their own. Dad, especially, worries about those decisions their adult child makes and tries to occasionally put in his many years of wisdom into the situations without realizing that unwanted wisdom isn't well received.

Being a parent is never easy.  Choices have to be made each day of a child's life to give them increasing independence and freedom. 

When a child is born, we convince ourselves that our time with them will last forever, not realizing that each year of their life will be different in many respects. Parents who have lost a child way before their time, learn quickly the pain that is often associated with 'letting go'.\ as they struggle with the many regrets and what if's after that loss.

 We desperately try to overcompensate for the deceased child by over protecting the rest of them. In a sense, we become the helicopter parents we were hoping never to be.

While we jokingly search for that button that forever keeps them small, most see the value of letting their kids grow up. 

Families from small towns realize the importance of letting go so much sooner than in larger metropolitan areas simply because they know that if there are fewer opportunities for their child if they stayed. 

So often, it seems, we try to live our lives through our children. Like the fans in the stands, we cheer them on with every success. Taken to the extreme, we try to get our kids to be successful where we never were. We enroll them in after-school sports programs thinking if we only gave them a head start they will gain that all important sports scholarship at the college of their choice.

 We think about all of the 'what if's' when we were younger as if we can help our children avoid the same mistakes we made at their age. We want to quite literally remove the pain of growing up from their shoulders and place it on our own.

 While there is the pain in parenting, we have a mighty Savior who is has taken the pain of mankind and placed it on His shoulders.  Each time you feel sad about the prospects of missing your child, cry out to God because he will meet you where you're at.

 In Isaiah, I'm reminded of this passage, "The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail."  

You can be assured as your child's parents that our Lord loves your child as much and more than you did. He has promised that when the time comes where you must 'let go' that he will give you the strength to do so. 

That, my friends, is an awesome thought!