Finally Falling into an Empty Nest (Now What?)
(Friends, I am not addressing the horror of the shooting in Texas. I am out of words for shootings in the US. I am tired of words. It’s time for action. But—-not here. I offer this as relief. I hope you find a moment of hope and beauty here.
This weekend, we were on the Kenai Peninsula for a track meet. Our youngest son was competing. Saturday morning, before the meet started we went for a walk on a beach. About a mile down the beach we rounded a corner and saw this:
A horse clinic. Of course! Why ride in a dusty indoor arena when you can cantor by ocean and snowed mountains?
But I was thinking about something else. My youngest son graduates high school this week. After 34 years of raising kidlets, it’s over. In a few weeks, no one is home but the two of us.
When all six were home, and life looked like this every day, spinning plates, cakes, fish and books and a thousand other things, I looked forward to actually sitting on my furniture. I looked forward to coffee on the couch, to peaceful mornings, to endless hours hiking and writing. To a quiet mind.
But now that it is here, it feels like something else entirely. I saw it on the beach walk.
Look, the top of the bank, 150 feet above us, was crumbling, sliding into the sea, chunk by chunk. Trees had leaned and toppled down the bank. The houses that lined the bank would slide down with it too in the not-so-distant future. Those homes, everything will go right over the edge. (I saw one woman mowing her lawn right to that edge.)
And now my husband and I are about to go over that edge. There will be no more track teams coming over for ice cream and a movie. No more boys clustered around a video game, shouting and laughing. No more high school friends around the table. I will miss it sorely.
But I saw something else on that beach. Among all the patches of fallen sod and leaning trees, there was this:
One tree had slid down the embankment entire. How did it manage such a feat? The roots still grasped the soil enough to remain whole, upright. And there it was, growing, thriving on the beach.
This is us, friends! I will greatly miss my son (and I miss all the others as well.) I will be sad. But God has SO much good ahead for us. Yes, we’re headed over the bank, falling into an empty nest, but the call to love and to serve and to root ourselves in the beautiful presence of our God keeps us whole, intact, strong all the way down. Ready to be planted in new soil.
I have a ton of international travel and speaking coming up, from El Salvador to France to the Canadian Arctic. (People to love!) I have books to write. (Words that serve!) And even more, there are new chicks to welcome, to shelter, to feed and to love. (Here, our newest grandson, born a few weeks ago.)
I know you too are busy doing remarkable things. Do you know what this means? Our nest is still full.
My youngest son Micah and my grandson Lewis
