Forever Beloved - Faith, Love & Truth

June 3, 2016

Embarrass Your Littles

Children love seeing their parents get affectionate, whether they admit it or not. I’m sure they may not act like it and you might hear shouts of gross or yuck. But deep down they don’t hate it nearly as much as they let on. Normally, the shouts are said with a smile on their face.

I think it’s great for kids to see their Mom and Dad putting their relationship first. Most of the time, especially in today’s society, the opposite happens. Parents are making their kids a priority and at the end of the day, they just don’t have any time left for each other. The kids grow up and leave home and the parents are left looking at each other like strangers.

It’s so important that our kids can watch us giving our spouse love and respect. That they can see we are still pursuing our spouses heart. The byproduct is that our children can watch their parents dating. When children see their parents giving each other time, affection, and respect it is a reassurance of our love and makes them feel secure.

Our kids are watching us. They are learning to be comfortable with affection and to be affectionate with their own partner in the long run. They are learning from us what marriage looks like.

Don’t ever be afraid to kiss your husband in front of your littles, dance with him in the kitchen and hold his hand. Pursue his heart. Show them your romance. What an absolutely perfect place for them to learn about love!

Here is one of my fav stories…

A few years ago the kids and I went to visit my Grandma in the nursing home. We were there during lunch and sat in the dining room with her. There were many tables in the room with people scattered around them. One table in particular caught my attention. The entire table was empty except for an elderly man and woman, sitting right beside each other arm to arm. I thought it was totally cute and figured they were married. Grandma told me they weren’t married, they were just “dating”. My heart did a little sigh, oh how cute that was!

On the drive home, the kids and I were talking about that couple and how cute it is that they are “dating” when they are probably in their 80’s or older. And Jade made a statement that not only made me laugh but also made me stop and think that maybe, just maybe, her Dad and I ARE showing them what marriage should look like.

Jade said…When I’m old, I hope my husband still slaps my butt when I walk past him.

Now I’m not saying by any means that Joe and I are inappropriate BUT we are a very affectionate family. I love you is a daily statement in our household between all of us. Hugs and kisses are never, ever spared. And yes, there might be an occasional butt slap when I walk past him.

We are not only telling our kids what a happy, healthy marriage looks like, we are showing them! Go ahead, embarrass your littles. Show them your healthy marriage. Pursue your husbands heart and plant a big ole’ smooch on him today.

June 2, 2016

When They Leave

Today my last little finished her junior year. And with that last bus ride home, she’s now a senior.

As they grew up, the thought of them leaving home would be pushed out of my head as quickly as it entered. When it becomes their senior year, that thought digs it’s heels in and refuses to budge.

My thoughts teetered back and forth between my heart being selfishly sad and being so excited to see where God takes their lives.

With a little convincing self-talk and a whole lot of prompting from Him, I settled into being so excited to see where God takes their lives. Y’all that is not me, that is all Him.

And with that thought in the forefront of my mind, I was able to beamingly smile throughout the graduation video at church, the graduation service at school, college visits and his first day of college.

I don’t know, and can’t promise, that I can do that with her though. While he lived at home during college, she won’t. And that, my friends, changes things.

This beautifully written article by Beverly Beckham perfectly explains how my Mama heart feels and aches some days.

I wasn’t wrong about their leaving. My husband kept telling me I was. That it wasn’t the end of the world when first one child, then another , and then the last packed their bags and left for college.

But it was the end of something. “Can you pick me up, Mom?” “What’s for dinner?” “What do you think?“

I was the sun and they were the planets. And there was life on those planets, whirling, non stop plans and parties and friends coming and going, and ideas and dreams and the phone ringing and doors slamming.

And I got to beam down on them. To watch. To glow.

And then they were gone, one after the other.

“They’ll be back,” my husband said. And he was right. They came back. But he was wrong, too, because they came back for intervals — not for always, not planets anymore, making their predictable orbits, but unpredictable, like shooting stars.

Always is what you miss. Always knowing where they are. At school. At play practice. At a ballgame. At a friend’s. Always looking at the clock mid day and anticipating the door opening, the sigh, the smile, the laugh, the shrug. “How was school?” answered for years in too much detail. “And then he said . . . and then I said to him. . . .” Then hardly answered at all.

Always, knowing his friends.

Her favorite show.

What he had for breakfast.

What she wore to school.

What he thinks.

How she feels.

My friend Beth’s twin girls left for Roger Williams yesterday. They are her fourth and fifth children. She’s been down this road three times before. You’d think it would get easier.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without them,” she has said every day for months.

And I have said nothing, because, really, what is there to say?

A chapter ends. Another chapter begins. One door closes and another door opens. The best thing a parent can give their child is wings. I read all these things when my children left home and thought then what I think now: What do these words mean?

Eighteen years isn’t a chapter in anyone’s life. It’s a whole book, and that book is ending and what comes next is connected to, but different from, everything that has gone before.

Before was an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager. Before was feeding and changing and teaching and comforting and guiding and disciplining, everything hands -on. Now?

Now the kids are young adults and on their own and the parents are on the periphery, and it’s not just a chapter change. It’s a sea change.

As for a door closing? Would that you could close a door and forget for even a minute your children and your love for them and your fear for them, too. And would that they occupied just a single room in your head. But they’re in every room in your head and in your heart.

As for the wings analogy? It’s sweet. But children are not birds. Parents don’t let them go and build another nest and have all new offspring next year.

Saying goodbye to your children and their childhood is much harder than all the pithy sayings make it seem. Because that’s what going to college is. It’s goodbye.

It’s not a death. And it’s not a tragedy.

But it’s not nothing, either.

To grow a child, a body changes. It needs more sleep. It rejects food it used to like. It expands and it adapts.

To let go of a child, a body changes, too. It sighs and it cries and it feels weightless and heavy at the same time.

The drive home alone without them is the worst. And the first few days. But then it gets better. The kids call, come home, bring their friends, fill the house with their energy again.

Life does go on.

“Can you give me a ride to the mall?” “Mom, make him stop!” I don’t miss this part of parenting, playing chauffeur and referee. But I miss them, still, all these years later, the children they were, at the dinner table, beside me on the couch, talking on the phone, sleeping in their rooms, safe, home, mine….”

– Beverly Beckham