Arrivals and Departures

Two weeks from today, we will take M. back to school.  What a different experience this will be from last year, for many reasons.

First, I am not dropping off my fragile baby girl, strong on the outside but already desperately missing the love of her life hometown boy.  The hometown boy is long gone, having thoughtfully made this summer so much easier by taking up with a partying girl.  Good riddance and all that.  And the fragile girl is still more breakable than she lets on to most of the world, but she has a stronger sense of self and of her gifts.  Her future is still unfolding but this year she is better prepared to handle it.

Second, I have one child coming home!  3 days after we take M. to school, S. comes home for a term.  Having lost a term to a medical withdrawal, he will do a term at the much cheaper Wayne State University than the oh-so-expensive Dartmouth College.  He will return to Dartmouth for spring term and graduate a year later than planned, but that is such the fashionable thing to do these days.

What will it be like to have him at home for 7 months?  He is dreading it, I know.  I hope against hope that he will use the time positively, even though I am sure that a lot of that time will be spent complaining to remote friends via chat and watching the Sopranos.  Most of all I pray that he will come back to faith.  The path he has chosen has served him poorly but he has to find God's grace on his own.

There is nothing like falling down to appreciate being picked up.  I pray that he will find grace and accept it and allow himself to be made new.  If he does, I see great things ahead.  If not, I see more struggle and pain.  I wish I could do it for him.  No, I guess I don't.  He has to own this.  It is his struggle to overcome.  I only have to continue to love him through it, coming as close as I can to living out God's grace in his life.