Letting Go

It has been an emotional week.  In previous posts, I mentioned my dear friend's loss of her daughter.  The funeral was today, and what a blessing it was to worship with those dear, dear folks.  Talk about letting go....dear God.... If you would, please lift my friend, Lynn, up in your prayers, and her family also.
Then, in yesterday's post, I told of the sweet arrival of our newest family member.
In addition, our two sons graduated from college this week, two commencements in two consecutive days.  (Seriously?  Yes.)

Letting go....

I did not think I would be one of "those mothers".  Yet, as I sit here confronted with Christmas task after task after task, the weight of letting go presses tears from my eyes.  My boys are men now.  They have completed their formal educations, and are transitioning to the world of full-time work.  My sister has undergone similar losses in the past three months.  Her younger, a son, got married and established his own family.  Her older, a daughter, is the one who gave birth a couple of days ago, making my sister a ... well, I think she is going to be known as "GranJan", a moniker I absolutely love!

She and I have not talked about this "letting go", but if you have been through it, you know it isn't easy.  When they start school, you have to let them go...but they come back home for dinner and bedtime!  As our children grow and mature, they mark off other milestones.  But, this moving out business...that's a whole seismic shift that never gets back to the way things were.  Like it or not, the family dynamic is forever changed.

No matter what, when the children are gone from the home, we mamas miss them, whether for the short-term, like taking a trip (shout-out to my friend, April) or on a more permanent basis.  I remember chafing under the wings of my parents and being eager to get out on my own; my sons are no different.  It's a healthy thing, really, but that does not make it any easier, in the moment.  That's where I am at present - - "in the moment".

God is God, but I have to wonder what He felt, how He truly felt, about the Incarnation.   (You know...that's the $36 theological term for God pouring Himself into flesh and becoming Baby Jesus.) John 3:16 says God "sent" His only begotten son.  Sounds like some degrees of separation there, right?  God-being-God, who knows what it was actually like for Him.  (He's so incomprehensibly beyond us, it's hard to even fathom.)  Still, I think about that a lot - - - how the Triune God morphed and adapted to the Incarnation.  I mean, formerly, all three Persons were together, ruling and reigning in Heaven, interacting with each other, governing the affairs of people.  But, then, a rather momentous change occurred....God condescended to us, and then descended to us, in the form of a Baby because "God so loved..." and God sent....

So, I'm sure He knows what it feels like for the picture to change, for the routines to be altered, for the ways of interacting to be different.  He was okay with it, because He loved us that much...He loved us enough to "let go" of how things were between the 3 Persons of the Trinity and make room for "the new normal".  As the song goes, "when you love someone, you make room."  That includes making room to "let go".

There's this quote from Abraham Lincoln I wrote a few years ago on the back of a torn envelope and keep on my piano.  "I remember my mother's prayers, and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all my life."  See, I dedicated those boys to God before they were born and reminded them (and myself) of that truth as I prayed over them aloud while they were children.  I still have to remind myself - - that they belong to God.  How wonderful, though, that praying for them does not have to end, nor should it, no matter how far they roam or how old they get.  I plan to pray for them the last day my soul inhabits this body, on this Earth.

What a blessing that I never have to let go of them in prayer!  What a comfort that my Heavenly Father understands a mother's loving heart and that His love for them far outweighs mine!