"Where’s your focus—on you or someone else?"
My wife and I have been asked the same question repeatedly over the last couple of months: “How are you doing without your older daughter at home?”
And many of them look rather shocked when we say, “Just fine!” Others of them give us that “You-can-be-honest-with-me” look, like we’re in a state of denial or worse, lying.
What they don’t understand is that yes, we miss her. We miss her laughter around the dinner table. We miss her telling us what happened at school that day. We miss her beautiful smile and dancing eyes. But what they don’t understand is that she’s happy. She’s where God wants her to be, learning at the next level, being challenged and I’m sure challenging a few folks. She tried out and made the cast of the fall play. She’s riding horses. She’s writing stories. She’s daily unfolding her spiritual DNA, discovering her passion, talents, and style for making a life and a living. She’s in an exciting time of life!
So my wife and I choose not to focus on our loss—that’s selfish—but on sharing our daughter’s success as we listen to life and make a life.
posted by Listen To Life @ 11:02 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Good for you, Greg! So many of us parents treat our children as if we're be able to go with them everywhere they go and forever, creating a dependent relationship with us, but life just doesn't work that way. God designed us to have an interdependent relationship with our children, preparing them to "leave the nest" and go out to make a life, preferably as persons who bless the world with their unique contribution, using their passion, talents, and personality style.
Treating a "young adult" daughter as a "young adult" instead of a child is an important transition. That means I have to nibble on the tip of my tongue a lot, choking on what I want to say and listening to her describe what she hears in the situation, remembering my own exploration of myself as a young adult. I've discovered that when I listen instead of pontificate, she asks my advice occasionally and actually follows it...can you believe that?!
Again, our focus is on her and her realizing God's will for her life, not on ourselves as parents and whatever we're experiencing.
Oh, and what special memories your daughter is making with her grandmother! That is so cool!!
We are in the same boat except that our daughter is our youngest child, and we are now "empty-nesters." We are watching her grow in wonderful ways, and getting involved with the Wesley Foundation. Her comment to me before she left for school was, "I want to graduate Cum Laude." Wow! It floored me because she has not always been like that, instead being more of a social butterfly. But we know she is capable, and we urge her to reach for the stars.
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