Give a College Mom a Tissue

I take issue with growing up. Who decided 18 was the cut-off age for leaving your family and friends and moving into a closet with a lofted bed and a crate of granola bars, all so this rude monster called college can swallow up my baby and claim her as its own?

Call me a helicopter parent for ugly crying on the drive home, but I think I'm allowed a little discomfort while my heart rips out of my chest. We moms who devoted the last 18 years to building an unbreakable bond with these beautiful human beings—of course we're happy for them. Of course we're proud and excited for their futures. Of course this is why we raised them. 

But give us a little room to grieve.

Because here's something else we know. Our collegiate "adults" who are now expected to meet new people! and find their place in this world! and to show up to class ready to learn! on Monday as if their whole existence hasn't just been run through the spin cycle… they're hurting, too.

Happy and relishing their freedom, yes. But also feeling the ache of homesickness, loneliness, and grasping the air for anything familiar. 

It's true they're ready for this challenge. They will rally. They'll flourish. They're becoming the people God designed them to be all along, and that is why we moms can release our clutch without plummeting off the ledge.

Yet how do we do this impossible thing? How do we let go when everything in us wants to hold on? I keep thinking about Hannah from the Bible, who handed her son over to the seminary (so to speak), not after she'd enjoyed 18 years of birthday cakes, bike rides, and prom pictures, but when the child Samuel was only three or four years old.

How did she bear it?

Gratitude. 

That's what got her through. Samuel was the answer to Hannah's long-fought prayer that God would grant her a child. And because He blessed her with a baby at last, she didn't hoard the child for herself but instead sacrificed that sweet boy right back to the Lord so he could become the man God intended since before the beginning of time.

"'I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.' And he worshiped the Lord there." (1 Samuel 1:27-28)

Nobody's asking us college moms to drop a three-year-old at the temple. (Although it might feel like it, let's be honest. Lately every time I look in my daughter's face I see the preschooler inside. These are sappy days.) Most of us have had 17, 18, 19 or more years to nurture and love our kids in our own homes before they fly. Each of those years was a gift.

And it was always meant to be returned.

Our season of same-roof motherhood comes to an end in order for our kids' lives to begin. That's how it works in this culture where God planted us. So what does ushering them into His plan actually look like? 

It looks like celebrating their acceptance letters even as we mourn the countdown. 

It looks like helping them pack half a bedroom into those ridiculous blue body bags with excitement even as our souls fight the dread. 

It looks like sending goofy snaps just to let them know we're thinking about them—and deciding ahead of time not to be sad if they don't snap back. 

It means trusting that the foundation we built in those 18 years will hold, no matter how heavy we pile our joys upon sorrows on top of it.

Together let's pass around the tissue box, turn up our notifications so we don't miss a single text, and remember there's no greater blessing a mom can bestow on her kids than to release them into the life God has planned for them—with gratitude for every single year we got to call them ours.