saying goodbye

Spiritual resource to share: knowing each other spiritually

Micah (Germany '08-'09) and Ben (Lithuania "08-'09)

cruising the beach on Lake Michigan

These last two weeks have been full of getting my sons ready to leave for a year - one is going on an international youth exchange and the other is going to a nearby boarding school. And then this last week was spent actually launching them and saying our goodbyes. This has all happened in the context of two communities of people all doing the same thing and I have made some wonderful new friends of the parents of kids who are in the same program and going to the same school as my sons. And we are all helping each other and encouraging each other as our kids head off to their own adventures.

It has been helpful to me to remember and think through again a number of things:

First, our children have their primary connection to God. “God is Love” as it says in the book of John. It is that simple. Our children, like us, are made up of Love: we connect, we grow, we nourish one another and are nourished. This fundamental substance of our being is never lost and, just as the sun is not disconnected from the light and warmth it exudes; we are never disconnected from this source of Life and Love.

Second, new experiences will draw out from them (as from us) new and deeper expressions of this Love. We all have this Love. We are made complete in God’s image and likeness. So these new experiences draw out from us what is already there.

Third, if I know my kids spiritually, I can never lose them. One parent once wrote about how she overcame her “kid-sickness” ( a new term meaning the homesickness a parent gets when their child leaves home for camp, etc.) The main point was that she realized that whether her daughter was studying in the next room or whether her daughter was living a half a world away, it was the woman’s thought of her daughter that never changed - and this changelessness was all spiritually based. My love for my sons deepens when I understand them from a spiritual basis. I can continue to support their love of adventure, their insight, their innovativeness, kindness and joy. I grow to trust their ability to make wise decisions, following Love’s leading and being a help to others. I trust God and I trust my kids.

And finally, I realize that as I love them through a spiritual lens, I am also affirming that they live in an atmosphere created by God, good. I know that Love is also supplying them with what they need. I know that “God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.”

I draw my conclusions on this one idea. The love I have felt for them in the past is indicative of the growing love we all have for one another and will have. All things grow and I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Saying goodbye really then becomes saying goodbye to things outgrown and opening our thought and our love to the infinite new possibilities that are right in front of us.






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