Empty Nest

     Joy.  Fear.  Excitement.  Anxiety.  My emotions have been all over the place the last few months as  one after another our kids have left home.  Seriously.  Just three months ago three of them still lived at home full time.  Now this week one is left and he is closing on his first house in just a few days.

     Part of me wants to turn back time.  Remember when they all wanted bean bag chairs for Christmas and then they were too little to climb up on them without help?  How about the little plastic Cowboys and Indians that were flushed, but not quite, and so the toilet had to be taken up in order to get them out?  Holes in the wall blamed on grandma.  Squeals of excitement when daddy would come home from work.  Smiles so big it was hard to blow out the candles on birthday cakes.  

     Hundreds of Hot Wheels cars.  Basketball games, t-ball, football and soccer.  Choir concerts.  Oh parents!  Hold on to those times!  In the blink of an eye it will all be in the past.  That house that seems so small right now will one day be so big and so quiet.

    Of course there are down sides to having kids.  Like the time one got chicken pox and brought it home so that three others got it at the same time the next week.  And the stomach bugs, snotty noses and ear infections and ER visits.  But there is nothing like snuggling with that precious little child.  And knowing they are depending on you to make it all better.  

     "If I could do it all over again" has passed though my mind many times the last few months.  And if I could, there are some things I would do differently.  I would spend more time with my kids, interacting, and less time making sure the house was clean.   While I read to them, a lot, I would spend even more time reading to them and less time on the phone with other moms.  If I could do it all over again.  

      Perhaps the most important part of if I could do it all over again comes from the Word.  Proverbs 22:6 to be exact.  You've all heard it.  "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  And just how would I do this?  By example.  I would be the best mom and wife they had ever seen.  Not that I didn't do ok.  But sometimes I just know I didn't do my best of showing them Jesus.  And, as parents, that's our most important job.

     Empty nest.  Part of me is looking forward to it.  Part of me is longing for the past.  But I know this is yet another season in life and God is in control.  The difference in now and back then......I'm learning to let Him be in control.  So I'm kinda enjoying life a bit more.  And I'm hoping our kids are seeing that.  Because even when we are old, they are still watching us.  Learning from us.  And, if we're doing it right,  seeing Jesus in us.