Summer 2011 has officially begun and half of my children are gone.
It’s too quiet. Only my boys are left at home. The plings and dings of video games play in concert with the ticking of my clock.
It won’t last long, for boys are noisy most of the time. Jumping on the trampoline, sword-fighting and the persistent buzzing of the teenager’s cell phone receiving text after text.
My girls are off having adventures. The oldest is dancing through a month of summer in San Francisco at Lines Ballet .
Difficult for mamma to let her go that far and that long, but then I must admit that she’s been leaving, stretching those apron strings, since she was seven. The world exists for her to experience with all five senses.
The younger boarded a boat and scooted across a deep blue bay to Theater Camp on the edge of stunning Lake Coeur d’Alene {Click to see, so pretty: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11778910@N06/} Five days of cafeteria meals (that thought alone thrilled her). Five nights of raucous cabin antics, a fun cabin leader… even kapers, the mandatory work responsibilities doled out to campers, present exciting new challenges and opportunities to this summer camp newbie.
I helped them both pack. Two large suitcases for the older girl. Could we stuff them and still make it under the airline weight regulation of fifty pounds? Two small bags for the younger, light enough that she could manage carrying them up the hill to her cabin.
But are they prepared? My mom-mind can’t help wondering. Are they ready to make their way without me?
The quiet answer, “Yes.”
How do I know?
Just last week, I caught my younger girl, kneeling by her bed scrawling in a notebook.
“Whatcha doing?” I ask.
“My Bible study.”
“Really? What are you studying?”
“My Bible has weekly studies. I’m on week five. It’s about forgiveness.”
Who knew? She’s been at this for four weeks?
She showed a page from a small notebook, or prayer-bible-journal (PBJ) as it’s called at our church.
On it was a list of punishments. Six things she’d done wrong and the trouble it made for her. I read her carefully cursive-written list:
1. I had to not play on the D.S. for a long time.
2. I had to write a sorry note.
3. I didn’t get to play on the Wii or computer for two whole weeks!
4. Wrote, “I will obey my mom.” twenty times.
5. Be sent to the gym for lunch.
6. Be sent to my room until my mom got home.
She turned the paper and on the backside of punishments received and in large script I read:
A Lot More!
“What does this mean?” I inquire.
“There’s a lot more than what I could remember, but it’s all forgiven in Jesus. I will always make bad choices and good choices, but Jesus knows that. He’s not surprised. That’s why he came and got in trouble and died on the cross.”
She had written John 1:14 “The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us.”
In the suitcases of their souls, my daughters carry with them:
Forgiveness. Full grace and Truth.The reality of Jesus.
Because nothing can prepare us for the journey ahead. No parenting book effectively pulls us through all-night colic. No marriage counseling does the actual hard work of communication for us. No math class adequately trains us how to make a checkbook balance.
My girls will be thrilled, exhausted, lonely, hurt, happy, full and empty this summer. I will not experience it with them. I will hear about it in bits of conversation and in the coloring of emotion I detect in their voices.
So I loosen my grasp and allow their lives to become knit with mine, not as the tightly woven and restricting bond of mother and daughter, but a more fluid and flexible and eternal lacing of our redemption stories.
We will make our choices and experience the weight and guilt of a “A Lot More”, but where there is sin, grace truly abounds. It doesn’t weigh a thing. The burden has already been lifted. We don’t have to carry it along the with us. We can board that boat and ride across the bay free, open to opportunity, happy for the adventure, wake-water spraying our smiling faces.
We can pack the bags with what matters and practice our goodbye’s along the way, when we know that those we love, parent, teach and disciple will be prepared for what may come when they carry in their souls forgiveness, grace and truth, the reality of Jesus.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Alyssa Santos
