Do Over
This is it y'all! In five weeks, I will embark on the beginning of something new to me. The empty nest, or at least a partial empty nest. Presently, I have two birds sqwaking and flapping and getting ready for flight. One sadly....is about to leap. I stand amazed as I look at how beautiful his wings are and still, it is really hard to get my head around the fact that "this is it"! I will be giving him a hug goodbye and then praying that I have instilled in him something, anything, purposeful to take on into life. I pray he hears God's voice as well as mine when he gets himself in a pickle. Time will tell I suppose.
Now what? A new chapter? A new phase? I still have three years before the second bird flys off, but this certainly is beginning to put things into perspective. I am going to have a whole new....adventure? Yeah, lets go with that. I think this is as close to a do-over as one gets in life. When the kids leave home and your priorities change so drastically, you get to do over, or just do, what you have never done before.
So then what is it I want to "do"? I have spent many hours sitting and trying to just find who this new Sherry will be. What is it that will define me? What are the things I have never done but now have time to do? Learning to knit. I have always wanted to learn to knit. So I did. I sat down with a friend of mine and said, "can you teach me to knit a pair of socks?" She smiled sweetly and said, "Sure! But, how about we start with a dishcloth". So I have these big jumbo needles and I have worked diligently to complete my first dishcloth. I just know that socks will be next. :)
WOO HOO! Goal number one set. The newly defined Sherry is about to emerge. Or is she?
Funny. I just cannot, no matter how hard I try, picture myself in any other role than I am right now. As I spend hours asking God for the great and glorious path I am suppose to find, the new me, this new life, God told me to pay attention to The Now. You see my Now once was a young girl growing up in the country, then it was a high school girl trying to fit in. Soon after my Now was a bride running away with her prince charming, then a new young mother with no sleep and baby goop all over her shirt. And right now, my Now is a woman married for 20 years, a mother of two teenage boys, one of them heading off to college. Each and every phase in my life has been a Now, and I made it through each one. My Now, is all I need to be concerned with. I can't concern myself with what my Now might be next year, or three years down the road, or where it will be when I am fifty. I can't plan for what is ahead, and what my Nows might be. Looking back on my journey so far, if I had been handed a marker, there is no way, on Gods green earth, that I would have marked out the route I have been on, or ended up in the place I am now. This journey and my Nows have been so much bigger than me.
I have always believed that my steps have been ordained by God, and why would that change now? God has brought back to memory the times I would cry out to Him and say things like, "I am so scared to bring this baby home, I don't know what I am doing", or "I don't know how to be a mom of teenagers", and each time He would say "You will when you get there". And He was right! Imagine that! Each time there was a new phase in my life, I leaned on God to get me through my Now and we made it through. Why should this time be any different? As I cry out to God and say " I don't know how to let my boys go, I don't know how this new life with my husband is going to look, I don't know what to do next", God reminds me to focus on my Now, and that I will know what to do when I need to do it. That's good. Because, I just can't imagine trying to map this whole thing out by myself.
I sit and remember, the vacations, the memories, the laughs, the stories, the treasures I have gathered in my heart in raising my two boys. I won't lie, there have been tears. Many of them. There are things I will miss terribly. I will miss listening to the strum of his guitar. I will miss the fourth plate at the dinner table. I will miss him. But, this is my Now, and God and I will figure it out. Gods grace is amazing, and certainly enough for me. I realize also that there is nothing in my life that I wish I could do over, (well other than the time my youngest son and I thought it would be worth a try to get into a canoe and slide it and ourselves down a hill and into the water expecting a flawless ending. It was anything but flawless.) There is also nothing pressing in my life that I wish I could have done but never did, (other than driving my car into a line of orange construction cones). I have had a great life and I am so blessed! There is nothing I would change, because changing it, would mean I would have missed out on all my Nows. They belong to me alone, and I am so glad I had them.
Now what? A new chapter? A new phase? I still have three years before the second bird flys off, but this certainly is beginning to put things into perspective. I am going to have a whole new....adventure? Yeah, lets go with that. I think this is as close to a do-over as one gets in life. When the kids leave home and your priorities change so drastically, you get to do over, or just do, what you have never done before.
So then what is it I want to "do"? I have spent many hours sitting and trying to just find who this new Sherry will be. What is it that will define me? What are the things I have never done but now have time to do? Learning to knit. I have always wanted to learn to knit. So I did. I sat down with a friend of mine and said, "can you teach me to knit a pair of socks?" She smiled sweetly and said, "Sure! But, how about we start with a dishcloth". So I have these big jumbo needles and I have worked diligently to complete my first dishcloth. I just know that socks will be next. :)
WOO HOO! Goal number one set. The newly defined Sherry is about to emerge. Or is she?
Funny. I just cannot, no matter how hard I try, picture myself in any other role than I am right now. As I spend hours asking God for the great and glorious path I am suppose to find, the new me, this new life, God told me to pay attention to The Now. You see my Now once was a young girl growing up in the country, then it was a high school girl trying to fit in. Soon after my Now was a bride running away with her prince charming, then a new young mother with no sleep and baby goop all over her shirt. And right now, my Now is a woman married for 20 years, a mother of two teenage boys, one of them heading off to college. Each and every phase in my life has been a Now, and I made it through each one. My Now, is all I need to be concerned with. I can't concern myself with what my Now might be next year, or three years down the road, or where it will be when I am fifty. I can't plan for what is ahead, and what my Nows might be. Looking back on my journey so far, if I had been handed a marker, there is no way, on Gods green earth, that I would have marked out the route I have been on, or ended up in the place I am now. This journey and my Nows have been so much bigger than me.
I have always believed that my steps have been ordained by God, and why would that change now? God has brought back to memory the times I would cry out to Him and say things like, "I am so scared to bring this baby home, I don't know what I am doing", or "I don't know how to be a mom of teenagers", and each time He would say "You will when you get there". And He was right! Imagine that! Each time there was a new phase in my life, I leaned on God to get me through my Now and we made it through. Why should this time be any different? As I cry out to God and say " I don't know how to let my boys go, I don't know how this new life with my husband is going to look, I don't know what to do next", God reminds me to focus on my Now, and that I will know what to do when I need to do it. That's good. Because, I just can't imagine trying to map this whole thing out by myself.
I sit and remember, the vacations, the memories, the laughs, the stories, the treasures I have gathered in my heart in raising my two boys. I won't lie, there have been tears. Many of them. There are things I will miss terribly. I will miss listening to the strum of his guitar. I will miss the fourth plate at the dinner table. I will miss him. But, this is my Now, and God and I will figure it out. Gods grace is amazing, and certainly enough for me. I realize also that there is nothing in my life that I wish I could do over, (well other than the time my youngest son and I thought it would be worth a try to get into a canoe and slide it and ourselves down a hill and into the water expecting a flawless ending. It was anything but flawless.) There is also nothing pressing in my life that I wish I could have done but never did, (other than driving my car into a line of orange construction cones). I have had a great life and I am so blessed! There is nothing I would change, because changing it, would mean I would have missed out on all my Nows. They belong to me alone, and I am so glad I had them.
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