Remember that song Closing Time? It has one of the most profound lines of any song I've ever listened to.
"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"
So true, right?
Emma transferred from OU to the Fashion Institute of Technology in NY. Her first semester is here because of Covid but will most likely move out in January.
We dropped Brooke off last week states away. I cried leading up but once I dropped her off and drove off, we knew she was exactly where she was suppose to be. She hasn't proven us wrong. She's working the campus like it's nothing but her job, making friends and loving her new life (I'm a slight bit jealous that she's living down south without me but happy nonetheless for her)
Tomorrow, it is Maya's very last 1st day of high school.
Tomorrow, is my very last first day of my girls being in K-12.
Some other beginning and now it's ending.
It wasn't so long ago when I was overwhelmed at the thought of a very important beginning. My first pregnancy. I sat there wondering how I could be in charge of another human's life. Heck, in my 20's, I wasn't even sure I was great at being in charge of my own life much less someone else's.
We live this life filled with so many beginnings and endings, right? Most of which are small insignificant beginnings and are rather unimportant in the grand scheme of our lives. Most span a short period of time and have uneventful ends and we move on to the next thing. Jobs are sometimes short lived, friendships can sometimes be like that, vacations, where you live, a hobby or even owning a pet (if you were like our family, the longest a pet made it in our home was 3 years, until Flynn, whom I am absolutely obsessed with). So many things come and go and don't span decades.
But then you have kids. You bring your first one home. You're scared of messing up. You're scared of messing THEM up. And then you begin to get the hang of it so you think hey, this parenting thing isn't so hard and you try it again and have another and maybe another. But with each one you realize it isn't that easy. It isn't a science at all. Quite literally, none of it is a no brainer. They are all COMPLETELY different so parenting each of them will take lots of prayers, lots of thinking outside of the box and not comparing one to the other.
You parent. You put your heart and soul into decades trying to figure it all out. Trying to figure THEM all out. You try your very best to raise them into these responsible, respectful, loving, kind adults.
If you're like me, your oldest gets to be around 14 and you begin to realize all those tired early days of parenting where you were looking at the clock hoping it would get to bedtime faster, really had gone too fast. You spent so much time hoping the weeks and seasons could go faster because you were tired. So dang tired of this hard stuff called parenting.
Then your oldest gets to be around 8th grade or so and you realize oh, shoot, have I/we done enough? Have we taught them enough? Have we loved them enough? Have we disciplined them enough? Have we shown them how to do things enough? You then switch gears quickly and instead of hoping things will go faster you switch to wanting them to go slower. Time, please slow down. I want more time with them. I want to spend more dinners with them. I want more conversations with them. More shopping sprees with them. More ice cream runs with them. More, more, more....just a little bit more time with them.
And then that new beginning, that new little life you brought home from the hospital is ending their child hood and some other new beginning is happening.
Nobody ever prepares you or explains to you that that overwhelming "I have no clue what I'm doing" feeling you had the night you brought that new little life home from the hospital would resurface in this new beginning called "letting go" of that little life you've poured your blood, sweat and tears into. Now they are ready to do this "on my own, mom" just like they said when they were learning to ride a bike, except now you can't run behind them ready to catch them if they fall. You just are told, ok, now it's time to let go. Crazy, right?!
So many of you are right next to me entering this new season. A new beginning from that other beginning's end. So many of us are going into our own verions of "every new beginning coming from some other beginning's end". Those physically exhausting days of newborns, toddlers and running from one sporting event to the next as they got into elementary, junior and senior high have almost come to an end. We are all starting something new now. It went just as fast as our own parents warned us it would, didn't it?
My husband and I aren't old (well sometimes my body feels old when I carry too many groceries in at a time) but generally speaking we aren't old, we're still in our 40's but we are sitting here going, well, now what? What's our new beginning look like? We've spent the greater part of the last 2 decades of our lives together raising these 3 people and now it's coming to an end.
I never really knew what the song closing time meant. In the 90's I thought it was talking about a bar and a 2am closing time but then I looked it up.
The artist began to write the song for bars closing but then his wife got pregnant and their daughter was born prematurely. She had to stay in the hospital for a year. On the day he finally got to bring his daughter home, this song was released. He writes in an article later explaining that this song was more about the story of a life. He knew who he wanted to to bring home. His daughter. (a line in the song goes, I know who I want to bring me home). It was the end of her stay in the hospital and now they were bringing her home and beginning a new life.
Not much different than all of us parents who've sent our "babies" away to college right? I want to bring them home but they are starting their own new beginning's now. Lots of new chapters for them to all write. Lots of new beginnings for them to experience. We can sit back and breathe now.
You done good. To all you mamma's and dad's out there hoping you did enough. You did. You taught enough. You loved enough. You did it. You made it. They made it. Nobody shot an eye out. Nobody got permanently lost in a park or grocery store. They are loving. They are responsible (for the most part). They are even clean (well, let's not get crazy, we still may need to keep teaching that part). 😉 This beginning we started so so many years ago has ended and now we are on to the next new adventure...how hard can this part be, right? Kids being away at college is easy peesy, right? Well, don't answer that...let me just enjoy the quiet for a moment while I plan what my next new beginning will be! I've been thinking of ideas for years now.
But rest assured we are all doing this together and trying to figure this part out just like we tried to figure out how to clip a newborns teeny tiny fingernails while they were squirming around...that was easy right?! I'm sure this next beginning will be just that easy too 😉
To steal a line from the song for my closing "It's closing time, it's time for you to go out into the world". It's time, we obviously aren't done parenting (not even close) but we are in the process of letting go and letting them make their own new beginnings. Praying for all of you in this next season and for your hearts, we've got this! Better yet, God's got them and that helps me close out this chapter and trusting the next.
