I’m mad at you! At all of you with a child more than 17 years old who left home! I hate you all! Why didn’t you tell me it would be this hard to say goodbye when they left for college!?

And all of you with babies too, babies that are older than my oldest baby, I hate you all too! Before we had babies, why didn’t you tell us that looking after babies would be so hard!?

Ah, yes . . .

It is because we wouldn’t have believed you even if you would have spoken up.

And if our teens truly understood the depth of our loss, many of these kids wouldn’t leave home. They are good kids. I relayed these thoughts to my husband, processing them aloud through my tears.

“And we want them to leave,” I cried out. “Yes, we do,” my husband comforted. Then he shoots me a sideways, knowing look. I remembered that this morning our teen was definitely right when she was definitely wrong and instead of bursting into tears, I burst into laughter.

I feel some joy mixed with some sorrow.

And so, “Goodbye!” we say as we wave. Except it’s not kindergarten they are heading off to on a bus. We homeschooled so we missed that milestone. It’s 600 km away and the tearing, the necessary, painful cleaving continues.

Reflecting God’s nature He created them male and female. . . Therefore, a man leaves his father and mother . . . The Message

I told you it would be that way, Jesus reminds me softly. Many years earlier, in prayer, Jesus showed me a picture of my daughters, one after the other, ready to board a plane, to soar off on their journeys of independence. He was preparing my heart to say goodbye many years ago, even then.

Many of us homeschooling parents pushed the love boundary of our hearts a little further than expected when we cracked open those brand new math texts on day one of homeschooling.

The depth of love surprises us all, and surpasses the boundary markers we set up to protect ourselves.

If we love what we know, then we will get to know these kids and our love for them will transform us, them. Love always does.

I’m not saying that homeschooling is one domino after the other of perfect days. I have homeschooled for 4,745 days (I’m convinced you don’t have enough math skills to figure out how many years I have spent homeschooling- Who does?). Out of all those days, I have NEVER yet had one perfect day.

Nope. Not one.

Just daily joy mixed with daily sorrow.

Master storyteller J.R.R. Tolkien explains it this way:

The possibility of [sorrow and failure] is necessary to the joy of deliverance . . . giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

And so saying goodbye to the teen as she flies off to college is just another homeschooling day: some joy mixed with some sorrow. We are used to that. We’ve gotten stronger over the years. It’s just another part of the daily homeschooling rhythm.

We will be ready because we have been practicing every day for this: some joy and some sorrow, repeat tomorrow.

We’re going to be OK.

And so as we watch them soar, we nurse our grief a little, and then flap our baby wings and listen for the call from Him into a new adventure.

And in the same way that we invest in our future by putting aside a few dollars each month, is He asking us to invest in our spiritual future by putting aside a few minutes each day to listen to Him calling us, comforting us, asking us to set aside the old, and to pick up the new?

How is he calling you to wake up?

Where to next God?

I can’t quite fly yet but I am sensing another adventure.

Yes, I’ll follow!

(How about you?)