Changes.....

Before you read this I want to make a disclaimer...you might cry...if I am going to go on what I feel at the moment anyway, and then again, maybe you wont! Dont read if you dont want to take the chance!

I have been feeling so many things lately, many of them not necessarily things I understand in the slightest and some of them are familiar emotions. The other day I got to spend a good chunk of time with my sister Connie. We have always been close (well except when I was a teenager) but lately with our work schedules the way that they are we haven't gotten to see each other or talk to each other very much. We are sitting at lunch having a nice chat and I was telling her all the things I have been feeling lately and she said, I have this great book, its called "Hotflashes From Heaven" I think you should read it. And she commenced telling me some of the highlights of the book. Later that day she and Jim returned to the house to have dinner and sit around our fire pit (fire inside the pit of course) and brought the book with her. I began reading it the next day and though I am not done with it, I am finding such wonderful stuff in it I just had to share.

I have alread blogged about our kids so much that I hate to keep ragging on the issue but the fact that I am staring another and I might stress, FINAL graduation in a few weeks, is pretty pivotal to me, pretty high on my list of (in Kelsey Overby's terms) "OH MY GOODNESS, YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING ME" things. As I read this book, at times laughing so hard I cried, I hit the chapter on Refeathering your nest and began to cry, at times uncontrollably, it was written for me.

In this chapter, Ronna, the author, had found a birds nest with one intact Robins egg in it. As she studied the nest with this egg, the Lord (a hotflash from heaven) began speaking to her heart about how she had built her home, her nest into this place of foundations, nurture and care. At one point, as she stood there thinking, listening to the Lord and pondering how the nest had fallen 15 feet and remained intact, this came to her...and thus, spoke to my heart.

From the book:
If God could spare a single egg in a windstorm, how much more would He care for my own four?

"Let go of the sadness and browbeating, said the downy soft hush in my heart, "you can now feather your nest with prayers for your grown children. And their someday spouses. And their future children and your someday grandchildren and then their future grandchildren. All of this is a type of ordained nest building. Trust me, you STILL have much influence in their lives. And much to do as a nest builder. In doing so, you'' hatch this thing I call a "new you" and discover a form of motherhood"
"Those were difficult words to hear, in many ways I didn't want to be a new you, I definitely didn't (don't) want a new form of motherhood. I didn't want to be the courageous mid-life mom who watches, prays and trusts from afar. I wanted to be the old, obliviously optimistic, hands-on-mommy. The one who didn't believe I could mess up as a mother. The one who was absolutely, positively convinced I could kiss away all my children's boo boos. And I wanted my old kids back too. The ones who hung on my every word. Who thought I, in turn, hung the moon. The ones who still hadn't discovered that I was human and that they were too and that there were some boo boos that no human can ever kiss away."

So, as I read that and sobbed, I realized one of the reasons I had been feeling so down these days, so, blah...Yes, I so so long for the days of PB &J and naps, of sitting and cuddling with a book and kissing those little faces that are freshly scrubbed from a bath. I look at my "baby" who towers over me and sometimes barely gets out a grunt before he crawls out the door to get in his car and make his way to school, and want to shove him back to his baby hood, to have him once again crawl up into my lap and ask me to read him a book or to call me from his bed to come and read from the bible and pray with him. As I watch him stumble around with his hair all askew, I so wish I could reach out and smooth it down without a grimace from him, to touch his arm and not have him move away. My nest isn't emptying, Ryan is still here, Aaron isn't leaving anytime soon, and Kaylee is next door, and yet, it is. In some ways, having them right here is harder. I have to stand by on the sidelines of their lives and watch from a few feet away, I get a front row seat and sometimes I really don't like it. I ache from the feeling of loss, the feeling of letting go and from knowing that I must move on, I must allow the change (yes, THE CHANGE and the change) to take place in my life.

As I read the book this morning I realized that I have been fighting this change in my life, the changes that are happening in my body as I draw closer and closer to 50 and the changes that are happening in my family as the last of my baby birds reaches another milestone in his life (why oh why did I ever want him to walk?) and that if I continue to fight it and not embrace it, I will continue to fall down this rabbit hole of gloom and be unable to move into the new phase the Lord has for me. Do I want to move? no. Will I? yes. Only because the Lord asks it of me. So here I sit, listening to Aaron getting ready for school (he's late and I had to wake him) and my heart is feeling more at peace. I think I will text John a smiley face, since my own face hasn't really carried that many smiles on it lately and I will watch this youngest child of mine from afar and pray him out the door and into his graduation cap and gown (lord knows he needs it right now) and I'll let the dog out, AGAIN....(some things never change) and I will think about our oldest returning home this Sunday (with the girl he loves in tow) and get ready for a housefull of kids, company, and hopefully, the laughter of celebration! Am I ready? No... but with the Lord and the man who has stood by me through all the good and bad, I will be okay, he alone will understand the tears I cry on the day Aaron receives his diploma, tears of sorrow mixed with joy. Ahhhhhhh.........

Yep, times they are a changing!