8-24-26<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the time of year when children, and parents, are getting ready for \u201cback to school\u201d prep and good-byes. Elementary school, home schooling curricula, college, and various send-offs to trade schools and military deployments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps parents share similar emotions to their kids\u2019. Oh, the jokes are that parents feel relief to see the kids leave home so they might savor some peace and quiet. And it is a clich\u00e9 that children can\u2019t wait to leave home, whether for summer camp or college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding parents\u2019 feelings, which are much closer to my present state of dignified decrepitude, I have shared a song by Suzy Bogguss before, and to which I listen every year around this time. It is called \u201cLetting Go,\u201d and relates a parent\u2019s point of view when the family\u2019s daughter prepares to leave for college:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She’ll take the painting in the hallway, Mother sits down at the table, She’s had 18 years Oh, letting go \u2013 There’s nothing in her way now. Confession time: I came across this song (written by Suzy\u2019s husband Doug Crider and her drummer Matt Rollings) about the time my eldest was preparing for her freshman year\u2026 at a college about half an hour away. Yet it was traumatic for me. And I still shed a tear when I hear it (and watch the music video Suzy produced), despite the fact that my youngest child finished college some 25 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is to say, the emotions are the same. Or they should be, when family relationships, generational bonds, parent-child connections, familial ties are concerned. Neither geographical distance nor passage of time should weaken, much less cancel, these precious relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Things happen, of course, in families. There are common warnings these days about toxic topics at Thanksgiving dinners (if families still gather, that is): you know \u2013 \u201cavoid religion, politics, Trump\u2026\u201d Sometimes an obscure misunderstanding can cause a daughter to cut off all communication with her father despite his crying himself to sleep many nights, and grandchildren deprived of knowing him. Sometimes a child is \u201ctoo busy\u201d with a career and lets her parents become strangers, perhaps until it is something \u201ctoo late\u201d to retrieve. Or a hundred other impediments \u2013 minor or major, or factors that are deep or evanescent \u2013 that can destroy the concept, the reality, of family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even contemporary ruptures like ones I have listed cannot dissolve the bonds of affection between parents and children, nor soften the heartaches of separation. We parents are not like birds who push their offspring out of the nest, to fly on their own. Nature\u2019s examples seem cold\u2026 but birds are meant to fly; parents are tasked with encouraging their young; life\u2019s cycles are not optional, but imperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, the \u201cempty nest\u201d is inevitable. In fact a necessary and vital role for parents to manage. But that fact makes the situation no less tender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bible has much to say \u2013 of course \u2013 about families and the bonds of responsibilities, heritage, and love between parents and children. Parents make uncountable and often subtle sacrifices for their children; and children absorb uncountable traits and values from their parents. Sometimes \u201ctoo late\u201d \u2013 my father used to paraphrase Mark Twain as often as many Bible verses, that when he was 20 he thought his own father was the dumbest man on earth, and when he was 30 he was surprised to realize how much his father had learned in 10 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to Scripture:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. <\/em>(Proverbs 22:6)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.<\/em> (I Peter 4:8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. \u201cHonor your father and mother\u201d \u2013 which is the first commandment with a promise \u2013 \u201cso that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.\u201d Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.<\/em> (Ephesians 6:1-4)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.<\/em> (Psalm 127:3) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. (Colossians 3:13)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.<\/em> (I John 3:18)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLetting go\u201d is part of God\u2019s ordained cycle of life, so parents must take satisfaction that their roles are being fulfilled. Life and death are parts of the Great Adventure, and so is nurturing children, and sending them into the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But all the same\u2026 It\u2019s never easy Letting Go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The one she did in junior high.
And that old lamp up in the attic,
She’ll need some light to study by.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
So many things she’d like to do:
Spend more time out in the garden,
She can get those books read too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
To get ready for this day.
She should be past the tears;
She cries some, anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s room enough to fly.
And even though she’s spent her whole life waiting,
It’s never easy letting go\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n