Looking Forward and Letting Go

Thanksgiving 2015 marked the first time our immediate family had been home together in over 3 months. Sue and I were very excited for the chance to have everyone home again.

Mike arrived home on Saturday night. Anne got home on Monday night. The six day event had a lot of exciting moments for us.

It is fun to look back at pictures of our children when they were young. As we look at them you can start to wish you could go back to those seemingly incident days. But doing so would mean missing out on the exciting times we are going through right now. The truth is we have found we enjoy our kids more and more as they mature.

Just as it is nice to all be together again we get tempted to want our children to never leave it is exciting to hear from both Anne and Mike as they have moved away. As they start their lives on their own being their parents get better and better. Mike’s Nashville adventures and stories of friends from 11 hours away warm our hearts. Giving us the feeling we have raised a young man ready to be independent. Anne’s success at charting a career path and long terms goals gives us confidence we have been successful at relating to her how it is important to be intentional in life if you want to get the most out of your God given talents.

Of course, Sara is still at home. But It was Sara that got the three of them together for a long session of “quality time.” Showing us they don’t need us to be their only support system. They have each other. Beyond siblings they are friends.

When given the chance our children came back as quickly as possible. They also left looking forward to getting back to their lives without rushing away from us.

Parenting is always a struggle with knowing the balance between holding on and letting go. The last 6 days gave me a great example of the benefits of letting go.

We will always have the fun days of rolling in the leaves in the front yard and making tents in the living room in our memories. They were great times.

But those days are past. Now we get the joys of helping prep for internship interviews, meeting new friends on Skype and one last college selection road show.

And after these days are over it will be back to tents in the living room with grandchildren. (One of the kids told me directly they are looking forward to being an aunt/uncle. Thankfully my younger siblings have young kids and those cousins can serve as a niece or nephew).