Open Hands--Not Clenched Fists

Thursday I was struggling with a Mama-who-just-sent-her-son-off-to-college syndrome. I had gotten up early to see him off a little after 5:30, and then I did not go back to sleep.

 

Crystal had moved away for her first school assignment the day before! I had said goodbye to two children in two days! There were two big holes in my heart. Rose was crying, too, after hugging Tim goodbye. She and he have been pretty close, working outdoors together so much and hiking and hunting together (bear as well as elk and deer), and having so much fun together. 

    We had stood together at the door, Rose, Danny, Jonathan and I--Rose and Danny waving both arms and me blinking the porch light as we waved Timmy off. He's just eighteen, and off to Bible college nearly 2000 miles away. 

So there I was, back in bed, hardly able to believe what had just happened. 

But my hands were cupped to the Lord--an open cup, not a clenched fist.

Sometimes my hands whisper to the Lord the prayer that I have no words for. 

Before any of my children were born, they were given to the Lord.

They were absolutely surrendered. 

I cannot take them back now. 

I must keep an open hand--even when I know that life will not be easy for them--when they are choosing a way of difficulty instead of doing things their way.

I knew if Timmy had his own way, he would be over in western Colorado hunting bear in a few weeks. He's not going to get to hunt bear this year; or elk; just spend hours in classes and struggle to get his papers written and collateral reading done. How fun!

This was not his way.

But when God called, Timmy answered yes. He said goodbye to this year's bear hunt and elk hunt and to the mountains of Colorado, and he drove nearly 2000 miles Thursday and Friday to rainy Pennsylvania where there are ticks that give people lyme disease and where he's going to try to write the term papers he always hated in high school.

And his mother waits silently before the Lord, her hands speaking the message she cannot say in words.