Next Thing You Know

Last August, our family packed the car full of totes, toiletries, and extra socks and dropped our oldest off at college.  Next thing you know, the song on the radio seemed curated for the trip. 

 
It's first steps, first dates, first car, it's
11:01 wondering where they are
You're saying that USC's too far
It's amazing how fast 17 years go
Next thing you know

No one prepares you to just drop your firstborn off and drive away.  You leave him with a hug and a prayer and a bunch of healthy snacks and vitamins that you'll bring back home later unopened.  You conjure up all the confident smiles knowing that growth only happens in the stretching and trusting that every little thing is going to be alright. 

The months following have felt like an extended season of wins and losses and cliffhangers and binge-watching Life 360 until you make your wife turn if off and just. let. him. be. 

It's a new season.  Our youngest has spread his wings - jobs, cars, girlfriend.  Our oldest has grown up while trying to figure it all out.  Both are learning that as you get older you recognize the world can be darker than you realized, but that the Light is always piercing through if you keep looking for it - glimmers of hope falling across the landscape of our days. 

My wife and I are rediscovering ourselves, our marriage, and all the work we've sidestepped to pack lunches and taxi carloads to games.  It's the gritty soul work we need to continue to show up well for each other.  Because if we're not doing that, how are we really showing up vulnerable and valuable for anyone anywhere?  

Author Ann Voskamp, in a liturgy to her children, says, "I'll never stop wanting to see more of your brave becoming."  And that's it.  Parenting here now carrying loads of gratitude for what is with a heaping of anticipatory hope for what will be.   

 Voskamp continues, "And the forever work of a parent isn't to take credit for your children, or take condemnation for your children, but to prayerfully keep taking your children to Christ no matter what — and I promise to always be your greatest prayer warrior..."  I believe this is how God sees us.  And He sees us, all stumbling and desperate - anxious and pushing through.  He sees us masked up and posting on IG pretending we're not a mess.  And yet, He keeps calling us back to our truest selves, His Spirit in us.  Reminding us that it's in Him that we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).  He keeps calling us back to Himself, cheering us on, our ultimate prayer warrior.  Anticipating our brave becoming.  

We're not going to have it all figured out, for them or us.  Life is about finding the courage to keep showing up.  Soaking in the wins.  Greiving the losses.  Fighting for each other.  Always leveraging influence for the least and the lonely.  Relentlessly calling out the good.  Carrying ourselves with big body language, not puffed up with pride but spilling joy and grace and hope around like there will always be more.  Because the best is yet to come.