journeys-page

I want to share with you a piece I wrote a few years ago when life was much simpler and I had just taken our oldest daughter Katie on the one block walk to her first day of Kindergarten. Now, Katie is 30 and just got engaged to be married this past spring! This is from September 1994: “I walked my oldest child off to Kindergarten this year. Me, holding her hand with pride. She, siphoning as much security out of my palm in one block as humanly possible. It seems as if I have now eased ever so gently into the world of permanent adulthood. You can still be a kid when you get married. You can even hold on to the illusions of kid-hood when you have a child. You can waffle back and forth with them as they grow; rediscovering the child part of you that you’d long since forgotten. But, when that child enters formal education it’s time to pass the childhood baton on to the next generation and settle into permanent, life-insurable, parenting adulthood. The other thing that makes me proud and sad at the same time, is that she is growing up so fast.  She’s not my baby girl any more. A part of me wants to hold her back until she’s maybe eight or ten before throwing her into the public realm. But the time has come for her to take the first of many steps out of the nest. And it’s my job to prepare her for the flight, then let her struggle with learning how to make her own wings work. I wonder if this is the way God feels as God watches us take our first tentative steps into the public realm of faith? When we first share our gifts with other people who might reject what we have to offer. . . When we risk seriously praying and listening to God for the first time . . . When we do anything that says to the world that God has made a difference in our lives?  Is God proud and sad to watch us grow and mature? I don’t know. But sometimes I wish that God would hold MY hand as I cross the street to greater responsibility in my faith journey.” Grace & Peace, Rev. Kelly