She was so old and so sick and I knew we only had a few minutes left with her, but they told us she could still hear. So I got down beside her face, that face I knew it would break my heart not to see anymore, and I spoke the words before my chances ran out. No one ever loved me in quite the way you did, and I want to thank you. Why did I hold the words in until just shy of too late? But I could've been 110 and I still wouldn't have been ready to let her go.
Not too many months later, there was more letting go to do as I stood gazing at the shell of him one last time. My mind reeled and emotions raged wild, but mostly I was just broken. And in that moment I learned it all over again, only this time in deeper and more gut-wrenching ways. The biggest battle is in letting go
. Thirty-one days of battles and I could go on forever if I had the time and the tenacity for it. But as I wrap things up on this thirty-first day of October, it also happens to be my firstborn's eighteenth birthday.
Talk about letting go.
This is new for me, relaxing my hold on this being created and grown inside of me. This child who when born from my body took a part of me with her. And now there's a good-sized chunk of my heart that'll go wherever she decides to take it, down whatever path He leads her, even if to the ends of the earth.
As a sixth grader she started in with, "I want to be a missionary, and I want to go to
Africa!" and everything in me screamed "
NO!". But her wise grandfather (my father) said I mustn't discourage it. So I've had six long lightning-fast years to make peace with the idea, to come to understand that she's not really my child at all but
His child. And He put her here to fulfill His calling upon her life.
So here I am in another season of letting go. But this is where it gets the hardest it's been yet, especially since she's half-way out the door already and singing her heart out about it. And to think, only yesterday her adulthood seemed a thousand years away.
This relentless tug on my heart may never let up, but it's a tug that pulls me to Him and forces me to pay attention as He shows me His ways and teaches me trust. So once again, I'll simply let go ...
and
let God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
By Amy at Make Me a Mary
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Comments (1)
This is lovely and bittersweet. I pray God blesses you for your obedience in allowing him to work in your child.