Releasing the reins

School. This is how it is suppose to be, right? More lonely than ever before? Separation anxiety? Having to let go of the reins? I sent 5 of my girls to school last week. 3 went for the very first time. 3 that I've raised since they were little babies. 3 that only I know how to tend to when one refuses to eat and the other throws a tantrum. Yet I'm suppose to hand them off to a stranger. A teacher. For 6 hours a day while I stay home and twiddle my thumbs. It has been a few months since I really felt the Lord trying to teach me "let go and let God". Trying to remind me these are His children and I am just to borrow them on earth while planting seeds in their hearts yet still allow Him to do as He pleases. Yet I have this motherly bond. Like I can't let them go because I know the world they go into. I can't let that happen. Yet I have too. I have no choice and so the pain hits my heart like never before as I release my reins into His hands and try to wake up each morning letting Him be in control of these children. Elizabeth Elliot writes "through the transforming power of the cross, even loneliness is a gift." He comes to meet us, He gives us himself. He will never let us go." "The Love that calls us into being, woos us to Himself, makes us His bride, lays down His life for us, and daily crowns us with lovingkindness and tender mercy, will not, no matter how it may appear in our loneliness, abandon us" Elizabeth writes. So this life, gives us new marching orders through each season. Sending your baby to school and learning to accept that change. Sending your child to college, it comes again. Giving your daughter away to marriage, there it pops up again. Loosing a loved one, going to the mission field. New marching orders. On and on we all experience that tug at the heartstrings yet it's just a new marching order. And we ought to do it gladly and happily because we know who goes before us and after us and right next to us through it all.

I arrive to school early every afternoon to pick up the girls. I sit in my car twiddling my thumbs waiting for that door to open so I can scoop up my girls. I eye that door like a kid in a candy shop eager to see them again. And then I smile as I know I'm about to get brownie points because I could afford juice boxes this week for an afternoon snack! So then we take the ride back down that gravel dirt road. Reunited. Together. At home at last. Motherhood. It's a beautiful thing. It's a gift. An offering I may make to God.