My girls. It seems as if they are growing even as I look across the breakfast table at them.
Their bones stretch and they seem to get taller and taller every time they emerge from their room with rubbing-eyes and hair that’s been knotted overnight by their pillows.
They are stretching and growing and moving and sometimes I just want it to slow down. I get a panicky feeling when I think that it will all be over so soon. That in a blink it’s done.
It’s done.
Here are these children who need me less and less and who will I be when I’m not needed? Here are these children under my roof for only a few more years and they are turning into women right in front of me.
But then I wonder that as their bones stretch and hands lengthen into the hands of teenagers, will I be able to grow into the mother they need? Because at this point, I don’t even feel equipped to mother an eleven year old and a seven year old.
It’s easy for kids to grow. It’s who they are. They are born growing. But me? It’s hard for me to adapt and change and growing for me isn’t natural. Not at all. It feels like I’m cracking and arthritic as I try to stretch to meet the needs of a family who is all growing older.
And it’s not just their bodies that grow. It’s their hearts and minds and spirits. And all of a sudden when they ask the big questions, they really expect a big answer. Or at least one that makes an ounce of sense. And most of the time I really don’t know the answer.
{I’m learning to say, “I’m working through that one too.”}
So will I be able to stretch my stiff heart into the elastic heart that my children need? I hope so.
I’ll have to rely on them a bit, I think, to show me the way. I’ll take their lead: to grow when they grow, stretch when they do and move with grace as they are learning to do so beautifully.
How are you being stretched right now?
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