Ready or Not

Last evening we had an Open House at David's preschool.

We got to go and visit his classroom

and meet his teachers

and see the playground

and even though I've done this five times before,

the drive home resulted in that all familiar feeling. . .

You know the feeling -

amazing love mixed with joyful anticipation mixed with sentimental anguish.

My last baby is going to school.

Of course, it is Pre Kindergarten,

but it is full time and well,

I'm gonna miss my days spent playing trains and super heros.

I'm going to miss our lazy mornings reading books and making up stories.

I'm going to miss him like CRAZY, truth be told!

He is going to LOVE school.

He is very excited and I am excited for him!

A beautiful article came out this week on the Gospel Coalition's Blog

entitled, The Truth About Pain in Childbirth

Oh how it spoke to my heart and captured everything this transition

is pressing upon me.

Here is an excerpt from that piece:

As the years unfold we begin to understand that we have been introduced to the great truth of pain in childbearing, a pain we naively believed would be confined to labor and delivery, but that visits us at every transition we nurture our children toward: the measured inhale, the steady exhale, the mighty push. And separation. Preschool. Kindergarten. Middle school. High school. College. Career. Marriage. With a familiar aching euphoria, we push them out---from safety and provision to separation and uncertainty. It feels like they would be safer just staying with us, as if safety were the greatest gift we could give them.

Somehow, this painful separation process is for our sanctification as mothers. For years I was not sure what the Bible meant that women would be saved through childbearing, but it grows clearer to me now. I once thought it referred only to giving birth, but its meaning encompasses the span of motherhood. Children are born in an instant, but they are borne across a lifetime. Childbearing saves me because it faithfully (albeit painfully) reminds me over and again that I am weak. It reminds me that I am not self-sufficient, that I do not have what it takes to preserve and protect my children, but that my heavenly Father does.

The full article can be read HERE

Inhale.  Exhale. Push.

Another one of my precious babes is off to school!

My tears are tears of sadness, but of joy, too.

And thankfulness.  God is good.  He is faithful.  He is all together sufficient.

Monday is his first day.

Will you pray for him?  And will you pray for me, too!?