To Be...Shifting Gears

Our bedroom housed Legos, art projects and Hotwheels race tracks all summer!

August 27
They are off! It's exciting! It's a grand accomplishment! It's heart wrenching!
It keeps us on our knees!
Colossians 1:9 is a great reminder for the parents of college students to pray without ceasing.

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.  

Shifting Gears
Freshman year my college roommate called in a panic. She had gotten herself in a predicament and needed me to bring her car to her.  Grabbing her car keys I headed out of the dorm and into the parking lot excited over the fact I was going to drive a Mustang instead of my very well used Ford Falcon. (Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to have a car of any kind.)  The minor element of this rescue effort we had failed to address was the fact that I had never driven a stick shift!  Fortunately, 

I had just over a mile to jerkingly maneuver.

Letting go of our seniors and launching them into adulthood can be a similar jerky motion.  We’ve attempted to train them up in the way they should go, but our parental nature is to do everything possible, even jerking them back into our grasp, to keep them from making mistakes like we did.  

In actuality, left to their own defenses, they usually come back for our advice on their own.

How do mother birds do it?  Maybe the parents tire of going to acquire the bugs and worms and decide:  “Hey, junior can do this himself.”  The initial push, which sometimes results in a plop to the ground, has to be hard.  My husband and five sons claim I cried the whole eight hour drive home from Nashville when we let our daughter out on a street corner at Vanderbilt to go find the building where she was to take a placement test.  It didn’t get any easier as we left the others to fend for themselves in other cities. 

Knowing God’s will, wisdom and understanding aren’t characteristics which are usually used to describe eighteen year olds.  I know… there are some eighty year olds who lack those qualities as well!  What makes for a smoother transition into adulthood and allows these young people to flap their wings is supportive prayer.   May our homes always be launching grounds fueled by prayer.

Pray for a college student today!