By Marnie Hammar
We’re moving our firstborn to Ohio State and I vacillate between lingering in the depths of despair and hyper-fixating on things like binder clips and socks. How much ramen does he actually need? And what are the exact dimensions of the dorm room wardrobe and will his shoes fit in these matching gray bins (that he did not ask for)? And then comes the forlorn sadness when I count the hours that remain and feel the need to simultaneously cling to his side like a dryer sheet and clap like a fangirl when he walks in the room. I wonder, would it be weird to watch him sleep? Creepy?
By the time you read this, mama friend, we will have unloaded all of the Ikea bags into his very first dorm room, we will have prayed over him, and I will have snapped a picture of him walking away after our goodbye hugs, because those are the torturous things I do.
Whether it’s college or moving out for a job or into a new apartment or city, this season of letting go is what we’ve been training them for.
For their entire lives, we’ve helped our children grow into the next good thing. We’ve made room for what’s next. By the time we have high school graduates, we’ve walked with our children from sleepless nights to play-doh, from preschool parties to elementary school field trips, and on to junior high woes and high school traditions and rites of passage.
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven,”* and as God grows our children through each season, we mamas turn, turn, turn with them.
The thing is, we’ve always been with our children for these turns of the plow. We’ve held their chubby fingers and loosened the dirt and placed those new seeds side by side. We’ve faced each new season in order, together. A time to plant. Then a time to harvest. A time to cry. Then a time to laugh. A time to grieve. Then a time to dance. (Ecclesiastes 3)
Until now.
The packing up of his most beloved t-shirts and sneakers, the purchase of bedding that won’t be used inside our home, the absence of daily being able to reach up and hug his bigger-than-mine frame — all of this is the beginning of overlapping seasons.
For the first time, our seasons don’t match.
We are still standing side by side with them, but we’re reaching down to prepare the hard ground for different purposes.
As mamas, we’re reaching into the soil for a season of uprooting. It’s harvest. It’s time for our beloved children to leave this field we’ve so carefully cultivated and faithfully cared for.
For our young adults, we’re breaking into the soil for a time of planting. It’s time to turn over the dirt and place the seeds and grow roots in new fields.
Our seasons aren’t sequential anymore.
It’s a time to plant and a time to harvest.
It’s a time to cry and a time to laugh.
It’s a time to grieve and a time to dance.
He’s ready to go AND I feel grief.
He’s prepared to flourish AND my heart hurts.
This truth — that we can hold crying and laughing and grieving and dancing together, that our seasons may not align with our children’s, that our lives are layered and full and hard and still so good — is one of those unfathomable ways God keeps growing us into who He wants us to be.
Mama, you’ve been so faithful to plant. He sees you.
And now we gently uproot them and open our hands to release them, while we instead hold tightly to Jesus. If I could, I would grab your hand and stand by your side as we marvel together at how God is planting them anew, as we pray for the deep sinking of their roots.
So here we are, ending with a new beginning. And lots of tears. And hope. The beauty isn’t found only in the seasons of laughing and dancing. It’s also found in the uprooting and in the grieving.
He has made everything beautiful for its own time.
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven…God has made everything beautiful for its own time,” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11).
P.S. An entire box of tissues was harmed and mangled in the writing of this post.
Note: This post was written before we took my firstborn to Ohio State in 2023. As I post this now, before taking him as a sophomore, it's still hard and I still tear up and want to cling to him like a dryer sheet. But my heart is calmer.
Photo: The Ohio State University Oval, with my three boys walking toward the William Oxley Thompson Library. So much of my heart in one picture.
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