Ready or Not
- Just me
- Sep 6, 2019
- 2 min read
As parents, we'd like to think we know what we are doing. We don't and let's just be brave enough to admit this. Our parents didn't know either and that's ok. We turned out alright. These tiny, helpless, delicate creatures are gifted to us and we're meant to cultivate them into productive, kind and compassionate adults. But the world can be cruel and life is brutal at times. Sometimes our prototype design is corroded by forces beyond our parental arms that strive to hold our children safe and away from harm. When they're babies we are their lifeline--feeding, changing, playing, walking. As toddlers we struggle to work with their newly developing, sometimes not so pleasant, personalities. By the time they reach middle school we feel we're halfway done and so it should be downhill from there but that mountain of child rearing had its peak hidden by clouds and we discover there's another third of the journey we must climb. And by the end of high school, we have to reconcile the fact that it's all flown by us and all of a sudden they are their own human. But this is the point, this is the grand plan, the goal in and of itself, right? We are meant to raise them well and then freely gift them to the world. This letting go, this release of the reigns, is the hardest component of parenting and one that many discuss in trite sayings or warnings as it were. But they never tell you it will be the most heartbreaking process. We hope the world will treat them well, we pray that they will be successful and happy, we also doubt ourselves in that we are unsure we've taught them everything they need to know, we question if we did the right things, we wonder if we've prepared them for this next journey in their lives. They don't need a chaperone anymore, they don't require our signatures on forms anymore, they don't need us like they used to. They are not ours to keep forever. And we can't protect them from the blustering winds of the harsh environment of the wild into which we are releasing them. But we must know we've prepared them, even if it is only to empower them with that confidence to trek the next distance with strong footsteps, a bulletproof heart and solid wisdom to carry them through.
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