All Is Grace

i see you there, sweet Mama of big people.

i see you riding out this season. mostly hanging on.

i see you navigating these new waters. taking the reigns with the big family prep and the busy running around. holding down your own fort, and working around the schedules of the big people now starting to hold down their own forts, and making sure that their schedules fit into your schedule and the schedules of the people still living in your fort every once in a while.

i see you working full-time. serving all the time. still running on everyone else’s time.

i see you figuring out who YOU are now that your people are ACTUAL PEOPLE. or becoming actual people, anyway. i see you question your calling. wonder if you have made all the right choices. rethink their education. their dinner choices for the last 18 years. their extracurricular activities. your eyebrows. the age you allowed them to date. i see you laying in bed thinking all the thoughts. standing at the stove thinking all the thoughts. driving to the grocery store thinking all the thoughts. sitting in the row at church thinking. all. the thoughts.

so many thoughts.

i see you.

i know you.

i am you.

i know this struggle. this wonder. this ACHE. i know what it is to just not know how to help them through the break up. i know what it is to be angry about the dumb choice they just keep making. i know what it is to want to shake them by their shoulders. to shake myself by the shoulders. to wonder where they are going to end up and who they are going to finally become and how i could have prepared them better for all of this.

i know what it is to fear. i have feared what other people think of me. what other people think of them. and i know what it is to let that crap go.

i’m still letting all of that crap go.

i know what it’s like to be quiet and just…wait. watch it all play out. think it all through. listen while they think it through.

pray.

i know the agony of having no other choice but to just pray.

i see you.

i am praying FOR YOU. storming the gates of heaven FOR YOU. that is what we need to do for each other. take just a moment and hear me right now: you, sweet Mama, you are seen. you are known. by me, but also by Him.

and if you need me, i am here.