Letting Go

It is almost September again, the time of year when mothers and fathers are sending their children off to pre-school, kindergarten or college for the first time. Some children will laugh and run right into their class. Some will hang on tightly to mother's or father's hand. Some parents will be celebrating their new freedom; some will be mourning the loss of a childhood. Whatever the scenario, I've come to realize that letting go of our children is a natural progression of life.

I remember several years ago when we dropped our son off at college for the first time. We packed all his worldly belongings into a 1995 Ford Taurus and headed for Biola University in La Mirada, California. He was almost 21 at the time and had worked and gone to junior college for several years before transferring to the university. He was ready to go and I felt confident that he would do well there. I was ready for him to go; ready for him to experience life outside of our small town; ready for him to know what it is like to live on his own; ready for him to meet new people and make friends whom he will hopefully have for a lifetime. And yes, ready for him to meet a "nice Christian girl" and settle down. I was ready to let go.

Letting go is a process. Their first step, their first sleep-over, the first day of school, to their first trip without you is a progression of trust for both parent and child. The child trusts that mom and dad will still be there when they return and will joyfully welcome them home. The parents trust that the child will remember what they've been taught and wear clean underwear.

Each new adventure our children have tests our parenting skills and our faith in God. It is through the raising of our children that we learn about God and about ourselves. Our children teach us how to live and love like Jesus. We learn what it means to love unconditionally. We learn how to care about someone other than ourselves. We know how it feels to love someone enough to give our life for that person. We learn how to trust God more completely as we must now trust him with our most precious possession. We learn how to pray.

After my son Joel preached at our church for the first time, I received many compliments. "You have done a great job parenting", people said. "You have raised him well." The truth is he has raised me well. He has made me a better parent, a better person.

They say when you become a parent your heart is never again your own. I suppose this is true as it feels that a part of my heart is now at Biola. The humorist Erma Bombeck said children are like kites. "You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless ... they crash ... you add a longer tail ... they hit the rooftop ... you pluck them out of the spout. You patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly. Finally, they are airborne, but they need more string and you keep letting it out. With each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy because the kite becomes more distant, and somehow you know that it won't be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar -- free and alone. Only then do you know that you did your job."

I am ready to stand back and watch my son soar to new heights and a new direction knowing that his kite string is still fully in hands of his Heavenly Father.

As I finished this article my phone rings. It is my son. He needs my help, he frantically says. "What is wrong!" I reply. I am already calculating how long it would take me to get to La Mirada. "I've gotten a piece of dental floss stuck in my tooth and I can't get it out!" he exclaims. As I try to contain my laughter he continues, "It is not funny, Mom! I have class in an hour and this piece of floss is so big you could hang something on it."

Ever the loving supportive mother, I give him some tips on removing the floss, but not before I ask him to send me a photo of his predicament with his camera phone. As my cell phones beeps again with the incoming photo, I sigh. "Ah, my son still needs me."

Theres No Place Like Home

"Close your eyes and tap your heels together three times and say "There's no place like home, there's no place like home…"With those words, Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz is transported back to her beloved home in Kansas.

The word "home" evokes warm memories and feelings for most of us. Home is where everyone longs to be. Where we are loved, nurtured, and unconditionally accepted with all our faults.

After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade center all the travelers who were stranded just wanted to go home. It did not matter where home was or what it looked like. Home could have a high-rise apartment in Manhattan or a farmhouse in Kansas. They just wanted to go home. Did you know that God makes His home in you? Jesus told the disciples in John 14:23

Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

God makes His home in us! Imagine the Creator of the universe living inside us! What a privilege and honor to be the dwelling place of the King of Kings and Lord of Lord.

In our home on we have entertained many guests from missionaries to the town mayor. When those occasions occur, I drive my family nuts by insisting that the house be spotlessly clean. When I consider that the God of creation makes his home in me, I realize how little I pay attention to the cleanliness of His home – me. Just as we need to clean our earthly homes every day so we need to clean our spiritual lives every day. Sin creeps in one cobweb at a time.

Many years ago we had a roof leak in our home. The leakage caused some plaster to fall down from the ceiling in the entry way to our home. It left a barren patch of lath boards about two feet by three feet. Each day I would come home and look up at that barren patch wondering when it would get fixed. It was left in disrepair and pretty soon I stopped noticing it. Months later someone would come over and comment on the hole in our ceiling. "Oh", I'd say, I'd forgotten it was there." Sin is like that. If you live with it long enough you don't notice it.

Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

2 Corinthians 7:1

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I John 1:9

We need to cleanse ourselves and God's home on a daily basis, not just of the little sins but the big ones too. Often we focus in on the small sins in our lives and overlook the obvious larger ones. Are we treating our families with love and kindness? Are we following His commandments? Are we living for God and not the things and pleasures of this world? Are we staying sexual pure in mind and body, whether married or single? Do we allow anger, envy, and pride keep us from glorifying God?

Take a daily inventory of your spiritual life. It is easy to let the world's standards become ours. Jesus gives us in the book of John a different definition of home. He did not have an earthly home in his adult years. Christ was at home with God no matter where his body was. Jill Briscoe says "Home is the will of God for the child of God." The most wonderful earthly home would become a miserable dwelling place if we are living outside the will of God.

God makes His home with us but He is also preparing another home for us. Christ said in

John 14:2-4, "There are many rooms in my Father's home, and I am going to prepare a place for you. If this were not so, I would tell you plainly. When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know where I am going and how to get there." (The Living Translation)

This world is not our home yet many of us put down roots like it is. We try to fill our longings with material and worldly pleasures.

"Most of us find it very difficult to want 'Heaven"' at all – except in so far as 'Heaven' means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts would know that they do want and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise." C.S. Lewis

The world does not satisfy for we were made for another world. Our eternal home is with Christ in heaven and as pilgrims on a journey we long for that home. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz had the power to go home all along and did not know it. We have the power to be at home with God every day while on this earth and the privilege to spend eternity in His presence.

Oh to be home! To bask in the presence of the Almighty- To be free from our earthly pain – To be reunited with loved ones – To see and touch the nail scarred hands – To worship at the throne – to be Home!

"These last few days! Every little nuisance every stale or tiresome bit of work every feeling of that estrangement which I never quite get over in another country serves as a delightful reminder of how different it will all be soon. Already one's mind dwells upon the sights and sounds and smells of home…."