The Empty Nest

    I always dreaded the day when the last child, the baby, would "leave" home. It was an event that was beyond human comprehension in those long ago days when I was pregnant with my fourth and chasing three others around the mulberry bush. Much much later when I would lie in bed sleepless reliving my conversations with my then recalcitrant teenage children, I found myself longing for the day when life would not be so complicated, when there would be no raised voices, no sibling squabbles to mediate, no screaming about the lack of hot water for a shower as my children got ready for school.  Well, the much anticipated day has finally arrived. As of 5:00 p.m. today, the eighth day of July in the year 2010, the family nest will be....officially empty.
   I am not grieving and I am not rejoicing. I am simply reflecting. I am looking at a clean den door that used to be plastered with the smudged fingerprints of children of all sizes. Just earlier this morning I had a flashback as I recalled the color-coded and highly detailed dry-erase calendar board covered with sticky notes that used to take up half my refrigerator door. I had a love-hate relationship with that calendar. In those pre-cell phone days I lived in constant fear that I would forget something important or even worse, forget and leave one of my children at an appointment, a practice, or a game. Since they all played sports, my husband and I were forced continually to divide and conquer. It was the way we survived. I even chuckled when I realized that moms on the go have become a marketer's dream. Pottery Barn has a complete organization system to hang on the wall instead of the refrigerator, and there is now something called a "Mom Agenda"  to make one's life easier. I guess that's progress.
    My house is quiet this morning. I have been praying and talking to my Heavenly Father about the path that I have traversed these past thirty-two years that offspring have lived in my home. I have often stumbled, fallen prey to insecurity and for a time, was captive to a desperate need to control what I could not understand, namely my children. It took me what seems like an eternity to finally learn the graceful art of surrender.  Not to my children and their endless demands but to the Lord. I credit Him with getting me through each and every day then and now. If I had it to do all over again, I would raise my voice less and listen more. I would try to keep from majoring on the minors and not worry at all about whether the beds were made, the clothes were clean, and the laundry was folded. And forget the iron. Who cares. I would definitely not schedule so many activities -- even those that looked important or beneficial or were educational or spiritual in nature. I would take more walks and read more books...not by myself but with them. I would laugh more and probably cry more. It is the irony of life that we seldom appreciate what we have in the moment because we are usually consumed by what comes next. So today, I think I will walk around my house. I will wander upstairs to my son's room and take a look at the mess that is all over his bed and his floor and his desk. I might pick a few things up, but then again I might not. I will stand there in the hallway and think about the way I sang Tender Shepherd each night when I put them all to bed, sometimes until I was hoarse. I will look over the pictures that fill the hallway, and I will grin at the way that one of the boys' ears stuck out under his baseball hat and remember how cute my daughter looked in her yellow tutu. So many days, so many years, so many memories.
    Despite what you may think I am actually excited and hopeful about this next stage of life for me and for them. But right now I am signing off to savor the cereal bowl in the sink, the crumbs on the counter, and the big shoes in the hallway where the last child at home left them when he took them off last night.