Learning the Art of the Slow Release

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." -Genesis2:24

The older I get the faster time goes. Seems to me we were just here a couple months ago, staring down the holidays, but, alas, they are upon us again.

One of the most difficult things in all my years of parenthood I've had to learn, accept, adapt to, and ultimately embrace is the art of the slow release. By no means have I mastered the subject, but with God's help and plenty of His grace for my royal flub ups, I can honestly say I'm trying my best every day to get better at it.

God gives us this gift of babies, this precious gift, totally dependent on us for every need. We embrace the calling. We love, teach, nurture, train them for eighteen years. We pour our heart, our soul, our entire being into helping them become... in-dependent, and when they do, we applaud their flight, and at the same time, weep at the now empty nest.

It isn't long before these children of ours secure careers, get married, and start families of their own.

What a blessing! It is a beautiful blessing... both for them AND for us.

But to fully honor the blessing it is, at least for our part, there might be a little more learning in our future.

We thought we had fine-tuned the art of letting go when they each left home. Well... not exactly. There is a second skill to master, and believe me, it can sometimes be trickier than the first if we don't remember our place in the grand scheme of things (and by that I don't mean ours, I mean His). *see Genesis 2:24

God makes it pretty clear right there in the second chapter of the first book of the Bible, immediately after He creates Eve... we, as parents, are no longer primary.

"But we've always been primary!" Yeah, I know. We made that mistake too. Our kids were never really ours to begin with though, they were always His first.

Now comes the job of welcoming without demanding, of offering without insisting, of asking instead of telling. And you know what one of the hardest things is to negotiate in this new normal?

THE HOLIDAYS!!!

Let's face it. There can be LOTS of moving parts for everyone involved to contend with (or... with which to contend, if you prefer)... anyway, the point is, we can't expect to have all our kiddos and their families at our house for every Thanksgiving and Christmas! Our daughters-in-law and our sons-in-law have families who love them too and who also secretly wish they could have all their children and their families with them every holiday too.

Things begin to get infinitely more complicated when you must account for multiple siblings on both sides and all their extended families each vying for a date and time that works for everybody!

I'll let you in on a secret if you don't already know... It will rarely work out perfectly.

So what's a body to do?

Ahhh... here is where we started, the art of the slow release. Once we begin to realize that it is a gift in and of itself to get to spend time with family, however, whenever... wherever we can, then we can start letting go bit by bit of those pictures we had in our head of the Norman Rockwell Thanksgivings or the George Bailey's Christmas Eves. We can let go of some of the traditions that defined "our" kids' childhood, and embrace new things, new ways of celebrating. We can loosen our hold on the peripherals that don't really matter in order we might better embrace what does matter most.. who matters most.

Hey, maybe some of our kids will fix my carrot souffle' with their own turkey dinners, or maybe tamales and chili will remain a Christmas Eve staple their children will take with them into their own homes one day. Main thing is, it isn't the food, or the decorations, or even the exact day that makes celebrating special. It's really just being together and having everyone genuinely happy to be there.

This year our family is getting to celebrate our daughter's wedding the weekend before Christmas, so we're celebrating Jesus' birth on the day we'd normally be having our Pulliam Thanksgiving (which in reality is never on the actial day to begin with). It might be a little out of the ordinary, but this is the way we've learned to roll. And, so far, our kids have all been stellar in making the "whatever," "whenever" "wherever" happen, because there's nothing quite like being home when home simply means family.

I'm still a student in the art of the slow release. I may never do it perfectly, but even in the imperfection I have learned this: being able to let go doesn't really mean losing something. Instead, you're just making room for...

so. much. more.