The Way of All Things

It still makes me happy all the way to my bones when I hear my girls laughing together in their room.  When we are all here together and I hear their joy, it feels like all is right with the world and I want to stay in that moment forever.  I won't say parenting has been easy, nothing worthy or important is ever easy.  

I know the days have been long but the years have been short and now they're almost at an end.  I don't know what I'll do when they move out and my house is far, far too quiet.  This is the way of all things, the natural order, and I won't try to stop it, but I will try to savor every moment together we have left to us, every moment before it all changes.

This summer has brought many changes as my oldest daughter graduated from high school and began working full-time to save up for classes in the fall.  My youngest daughter started driving and working as well and Mr. Bleu and I are finding ourselves, as summer reaches its end, with more just-the-two-of-us time on our hands.  

In my experience it is better to bend with this wind when it blows.  I've seen parents try to hold on to their children and keep them from flying away.  It never goes well.  The relationship becomes bitter, toxic, and never leads to what a parent's heart truly wants which is for their child to be little again.  

I wish my children were little again too, but they are not and never will be so young, so in need of me again.  They're learning to stand on their own two feet and that is just as it should be.  And, I truly believe that God in his wisdom made teenagers so unbearable and unpleasant so that it is so much easier to let them go.

Nevertheless, in these moments, when I stand outside my daughters' closed door while they blare music on a record player (of all things!) and talk and laugh and paint their nails together, I am deeply content to hold them, even if it is from a distance, only for a moment, and only in my heart.

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