“Love to you as you embrace and mourn your changes today.”

This was the closing sentence to a little note I received via email today.  It caught me.  Yes.  That is what I want and need to do.  I can’t pretend the changes aren’t happening.  I don’t want to refuse them and lose what God has for me.  But I do mourn them.

I am both sad and grateful.

The end of summer brings with it not only back to school sales, an abundance of grasshoppers and the final burst of glory via the prolific sunflowers that fill every open space but many goodbyes.

I do not like goodbyes.  Not at all.  I like hellos.  To me, one of the pleasures of Heaven is that it will be one big HELLO!  No separations of any kind ever again.

I just returned home from driving our second son, Blaine, off to college.   Our oldest, Sam, left a few weeks ago as he is a senior now and a Resident Assistant this year and had training to attend.  An earlier goodbye.  I didn’t even cry.  I’m getting better at this (I thought).

I didn’t cry when I said goodbye to Blaine either!  I think it helped both of them to be free from feeling that their growing up is causing their mother pain.  But I will confess that when I left him and went inside my hotel room, I collapsed on the floor and sobbed.  For quite a while.  Pictures flashed through my mind of my sons in elementary school – in class photos – during family hikes – laughing – even some hard moments.  Tow headed.  Curly headed.  Little boys.

I am not the mother of little boys any more.  My sons are young men.  All three of them.  And I love them.  And I am grateful to God both for who they are and for who they are becoming.  I am actually glad for them and the season of life that they are in.

But dang.

Oh just to be able to hold on to a moment for longer than a moment.

I was intentional this summer to be present to the moment.  To be here.  To be here now and to drink it all in.  That was a good choice.  Even so, I am increasingly looking forward to Heaven…to time out of time, to no separation, no misunderstanding, no disunity, and no more goodbyes.

But for now, I bless my sons.  And I’m going to cry a little bit more.  And yes, embrace and mourn my changes today.