They say that nothing can prepare you for childbirth and I’ll tell you something else that nothing can prepare you for: the first child leaving home!
He arrived on Mother’s Day twenty years ago with his fuzzy, golden head and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I took to him instantly, every maternal instinct alert, never once imagining that the very best thing I would need to do for him one day, would be to let him go. For two decades I revelled in hands-on motherhood, and then off he flew yesterday; on a one way ticket, across the ocean. He went like an arrow into the future, landing in the middle of Christmas Day whilst his family back home were only just waking up.
On this very day we remember that the Father gave His Son to the World, we find ourselves raw, disjointed and limping along a little because, we too, have just given our son to the world. It feels unnatural and it was difficult to do but it is as it should be! It’s all very good. We celebrate and we cheer him on, but we are crying at the same time.
After all the final hugs and waving until he was out of sight, we held onto one another and sobbed. One child cried himself to sleep. It was Christmas Eve and I’m sure we were supposed to be wrapping gifts and eating chocolates, but we crept around tender-hearted and fragile.
It was all far more painful than childbirth ever was, and so it was interesting to notice that our one handmade ornament with, “Joy to the WORLD,” etched into it looked more like it was saying, “Joy to the WOMB.” I took the message to heart. In that very place of sadness, joy trickled in. Low lying clouds, carrying the promise of rain and refreshing, set in as they so often do during this season. We stopped tormenting ourselves with his empty bedroom and began to prepare the space for his younger sister. She has been looking forward to having her own room and it was strangely cathartic to fill his empty space with her pink linen, colourful rug and a string of fairy lights.
He might have a long line of siblings still at home, but nobody can ever take his place. He might be out of sight, but he’ll never be out of mind. We will write and message and speak on the phone and we will figure out how to take family photos without him in them. I reckon we will even realise that our bonds are stretchier than we ever imagined. At night he won’t be in his bed at the end of the passage way, but we will be under the same moon, under the same universal laws, under the same watchful eyes of our God. And one day, sooner rather than later, we will be together again.
Thank you Father, for the gift of peace, hope, joy and eternal life. Thank you for giving us Your Son. Thank you, also, for giving us our son, and for this bitter sweet day on which he has flown true and landed well.
May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other. (Genesis 31 v 49)
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