Praying for Clouds

We're taking our daughter on another college visit tomorrow. It's an exciting time in her life...and ours! It is fun to see her hard work in high school pay off.

Can it really be that next year at this time she will have been out of our house for a couple of months?

We're not new to this. We've been through it before.

I remember when our oldest son went off to college. Even though we couldn't imagine life without him in our home, we just adjusted to it one day at a time until it was hard to remember what it was like to have him there every day.

It's sad really. When we are forced into change, we just do it. What once seemed weird...becomes our new "normal".

There was a day not too many years ago when we had four children home and we thought we would never, ever get them raised. It seemed we would be raising them forever. But next year life will change for the second time in this way.

Our babies will never all live at home with us again. There's no obnoxious heavy metal music blaring from the basement every morning...and soon there will be no corny British pop tunes floating up from there either.

(Oh wait...she's trained her younger sister well.  I don't think McFly will be out of the picture quite yet.)

Why didn't I enjoy those days more when they were younger?

Don't get me wrong. I want them to grow up and be self-sufficient. I don't want them to rely on us but to find their own way.

But I'm sad tonight. And I regret the times that I was too busy, too grumpy, too selfish, too preoccupied, too frustrated, too tired, etc., etc., to just enjoy them. To play, talk, laugh, snuggle...as much as I should have.

They grow up fast and we don't get that time back.

Even tonight, as I've written this, I've been impatient with my kids. I suck.

I hope that my kids' memories of growing up with me as their mother are clouded by grace, because I've certainly not been the mom they deserved.