“What does freedom mean to you?”was a question we discussed.

I came face-to-face with the truth that I don’t do the “letting go” thing very well.Īnd because God always seems to show up in crazy-cool ways when we start paying attention to what’s stirring in our soul, the topic of my Bible study a few days after college drop off was “freedom.”

I was confident in the great kids I’d been blessed with, but I couldn’t shake the ever-present paranoia that comes with raising teenagers in today’s world.Īnd when my daughter left for college, and I was the LAST parent to leave the residence hall on drop off day because I was still “nesting” and decorating her dorm room in a full-blown interior design makeover at 9pm, I finally realized I had some reckoning to do with my soul. The more independent my kids became, the more I struggled with carrying the weight of wondering and worrying and feeling clueless about knowing what was REALLY going on in their lives. My teenagers were so absorbed in their busy lives that I became the one following them around the house begging for a few minutes of attention.īut while freedom from so many of the demands of parenting young children was evident, I was still a slave to the fear of not being in control. Gone were the days where my time was demanded every waking moment. There was finally freedom from diapers, babysitters, and eventually even carpools. I felt guilty for not being there, I had to check in, I had to make sure everything was OK.īecause for me, freedom came from the peace of mind that only seemed to be achievable from my own ability to keep everything under control.įast forward through elementary, middle school and high school.

I used to count down the days to brief encounter with “freedom,” and then inevitably something would happen that robbed me of the peace of truly enjoying it.įrom croupy coughs to spiking fevers, there was always something nagging inside my mommy-brain that made it impossible for me to let go and relax for those 24 hours of freedom. When my kids were little, my parents would occasionally host a “grandkids sleepover night” so my husband and I could enjoy the freedom of a date night that actually extended THROUGH the night and into a glorious morning of sleeping in without the intrusion of little people.

Devotion relax relate release