Flying Lessons

I just watched these two beautiful girls – my daughter Hannah and her friend Whitney – get into a car and drive away, ready for the first day of their senior year of high school.

It felt far removed from those momentous first days of kindergarten, when I would pick out my children’s perfectly matched clothes and pack nutritious lunches in brand new lunchboxes. And of course they wore the huge poster board cutout of a school bus, their bus number prominent in fat, black marker, so they would make their way back to us that afternoon. I would slip this vital information, strung on a scratchy yarn necklace, over their necks and make them pose on our front deck for the all important “first day of school” photo.

There was no picture today. The last one I took was the year our son Ben was a senior driving his freshman sister to school. They wouldn’t stop for a photo, so I got a shot through the bedroom window, with them looking up at me impatiently as if to say, “Can we please leave already??”

So it’s a bittersweet morning for a mom. I know this year will fly by, picking up speed as it goes. Ben has already been gone two years, and we’ll likely be packing Hannah’s things this time next year. But that’s the plan, right? I’ve heard it put this way: We’re working to put ourselves out of a job. The goal? To raise our children to leave the nest as independent, confident young adults, ready to face a world of wonderfully exciting possibilities!

When they were little I quoted this scripture often: “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it,” (Proverbs 22:6, NIV). It’s still appropriate, and a comfort to me when I’m not sure where they are or what they’re doing.

But I also find encouragement in Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV): “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

It’s a verse I’ve claimed for myself many times, and now I claim it for my children as they take flight. They’re not ours … they never were. And there’s great reassurance in that truth, too.