It seems we start letting go of our children from the moment they are born.  It’s been different with each of my 3 children, but there were defining moments with each of them, within their first weeks of life, that I had to release my hold on them, even if just a little.  

With my oldest, I had to return to full-time work when he was 6 weeks old.  It was so difficult to take him to daycare, even though the daycare was on the campus of my employment and I could spend every lunchtime with him.  When we moved away from there, he was 20 months old, and I cried when saying farewell to his caregivers.  They had been co-parenting him along with my husband and I.  So much of his young life had been impacted by their care for him.   I was so very thankful for the good people who worked there!

Now, after all these years, he is 20 years old.  There have been many times of letting go, a little at a time, over the years.  Two days ago, he flew to Central America to spend this month in a diversity experience, teaching and learning more about teaching while in a completely different culture.  Part of me feels that he developed a love for the differences in people when he was in that daycare so many years ago.  His caregivers were of several different nationalities/races and spoke other languages.  Of course, that was just the beginning.

God has provided a variety of experiences for him over the years that grew in him a love and appreciation for different place, different people, different foods, etc., and as he works towards his degree in Middle Childhood Education and 2nd degree as an Intervention Specialist, I know God is making him into the man He desired him to be from the start.  I’m so thankful for this opportunity for him.

Yet, I’ve had to release him even more as I trust him to God’s care for travels, for new challenges he is facing, for his health while in a different country with unknown food and water and bugs, etc.  It’s a bittersweet part of my life, another piece in the puzzle God is putting together for me, and still a different one for my son, as well.  I’m so thankful for this time in his life and in our relationship, and I’m excited for what God is doing and is going to do in and through my son.