A huge welcome to my friend Kass Fogle! As time goes, my awe for Our Mighty God grows in how He connects and weaves our lives to glorify Him. It is an honor to share with you Kass’s sincere mama heart today. You will find her bio at the end.
A Youth Pastor once gave parents a jar with glass marbles in it. Each marble represented a week and the full jar represented the number of weeks we had left with our children before they graduated. We were encouraged to remove a marble each week from the jar and place it into another jar.
This suggestion had a dramatic impact on me, and I refused to do it. I did not move one marble. I read online for the first week or two that some parents faithfully moved their marble and prayed over their child as they did so. Others carefully selected marbles, assigning a memory to each one. These parents got the heart at the endearing sentiment in which it was intended: to mindfully and memorably impact our children before they left for college. Some parents did that. But not me.
My heart broke at the site jar until one day I couldn’t bear to look at it any longer and tossed it in the trash. I did not want a reminder of how little time I had left with my child.
As the winter season falls upon us, and we are but a few short months of our son heading off to college, I think about that night more than four years ago when I received the jar of marbles and wonder if I should have participated with more heart and intention.
But I do not regret throwing away that jar one bit. Because instead of inspiring me to enjoy each moment with my son (as our sweet pastor intended!), I saw it as sands in an hourglass, that when gone, there was nothing left.
That last marble would symbolize that once it was removed from the jar, life as his mother would end and my impact on him would cease to exist.
But then I remembered walking through a department store with my mom, at about thirty-five years old, and asking her for a tissue. After I used it I tried to hand it back to her and she reminded me I was old enough to take care of my own tissue.
And then there was the time, not so long ago that my husband was thinking about how to fix something and I offered, “Maybe we should call my dad.” (Side note ladies: Noooooooooooo).
And another time when my daughter did something awesome and I wanted to call my mom to brag and get her approval that I turned out to be an okay mom.
There are parts of us that we must shed in order for the new growth to reach its full potential. I look out my window each day and see the crunchy brown leaves crumbling just in time for the first snow. The leaves help to absorb the moisture when the rain and snow comes, preventing soil erosion that would leave the trees with little to no nutrients. Without their death, the tree’s life would not flourish.
We can choose to let our more dormant seasons turn into doom and gloom or we can choose to celebrate each and every moment, finding purpose that gives glory to our Father in Heaven.
While I may not be moving marbles, I am very intentionally moving from helicopter mom satellite mom. I am allowing him the freedom to transition in a way that he feels glorifies God and not in the way that mom tells him glorifies God.
I am allowing him to fall and get bruised and watching him shed important parts of his life so that he can make room for the new. And I shed important parts of me watching him do that. I’ve shed more tears in the last three months than I have in a long time because this shedding is emotionally draining. And I know that the shedding will make room for what God has in store.
In Philippians 3:13-14, Paul reminds us:
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
I may not have gotten it all right, but I know that if I look back, I can just as easily see all the mistakes as I can all the happy memories. So instead, I look forward to all of the good things that are ahead yet for my son. And I keep reaching for the end prize; the purpose found in our Father through his son, Jesus Christ.
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Kass Fogle is a Contemporary Christian Author, Speaker and Blogger who lives with her husband and two teenaged children in South-Central Illinois. She is working on her first novel, Ruth’s Garden and when she is not at the local coffee house writing, she is baking, hanging out with family or causing trouble with her tight group of girlfriends. You can follow Kass on twitter @kassfogle, visit her website (and subscribe to the blog!) at kassfogle.com or join her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/kassfogleauthor/ She’d be honored if you stopped by!
Kass would love to pray for you. Send a prayer request at any time by emailing kassfogle@gmail.com
Kass would love to hear from you! Start a conversation here or find Kass and her blog on social media.
Today at noon I will be live at http://www.Facebook.com/jdibble4Him Hope to see you there.
Check back Wednesday for one of the last posts before Christmas 🙂
In Christ,
Julie
