Letting Go

         The early morning mist clung closely as I watched my eldest daughter walk away from the parking lot toward her first college class. Surprised, I found my heart tugging tears to my eyes as I watched her take her first step into the great away…

         How did this day come so soon? When did my baby grow so poised and strong, so ready to walk away?

         It may seem sentimental from a mother of one this age, but it was the first time this home schooling mother handed over the responsibility for guidance and instruction to someone else. Up to this point I was her all and everything- her teacher, mentor, the one who set her goals, the one she sought to please.


         Now someone else will choose her tasks and priorities, and I will have to let suffice any brief account she drops of her time away.

         Silly me. How easy it has been to forget, all these years since she was born, that God only loaned her to me. She is not mine! All along He was drawing her into His plan, not mine. Now I begin that hard letting-go that all of us must face eventually. For many parents it comes sooner, as their kindergartner steps on the bus, but even one such as I will stand and cry as, on the edge of adulthood, they step away into the arms of God.


         I picked her up at the appointed hour, and listened to her chatter about professor and assignments and classmates. Then she sank into a silence of unshared experience; distracted, she turned to her appointed work as I turned, with a sigh, to mine.

         Jesus, I entrust her to you. I must.