To be able to look someone in the eye, hold someone’s hand, touch someone’s arm, enfold someone in a hug – and speak words of love and truth, encouragement and affirmation, comfort and beauty, strength and honor into their lives is a gift like no other.
Years ago Carole King sang “I feel the earth move under my feet.” The other day I was telling a dear friend that there are so many changes taking place in my life and the lives of those around me that I literally feel as though the ground is giving way – – – that it is shifting right under my feet.
We’ve all been there . . . . Imagining ourselves pausing at the top of the palace stairway preparing to descend into the ball . . . . . and everyone – men and women alike – becomes silent, stops dancing and turns to gaze at the shimmering vision (you or me) at the top of the stairway. You may deny it, but every little girl, every young lady, maybe every grown woman, dreams to have her “Cinderella” moment.
Today is the last day we will parent a teenager.
That may bear repeating: Today is the last day we will parent a teenager!
Amazingly, this day has come far more quickly than I would have ever imagined the day my oldest daughter turned the ripe old age of three. Sequentially thereafter, the age of three went by ever so slowly for our other two daughters as well. So how did this day get here almost before we could blink our eyes? How did we traverse the teenage years with our three lovely daughters with fewer (that doesn’t mean there were none) problems, blow-ups, rebellious moments, sarcasm, disrespect, pain and separation than I would have ever dreamed? Truly, by and through the grace of God, with continuous prayer and much time and conversation!
