I walked out into the lobby with a client last night an a little curly-haired boy in a taekwondo uniform caught my eye.  A few seconds later, my brain finally caught up with my eyes and it registered in my consciousness, “Oh!  That’s my son!”  My whole family, to my delighted surprise, was there in the ministry center lobby picking up equipment for a shoot my husband had first thing this morning.  Not something I usually encounter at 8:00 on a Thursday night at work.

Buddy, my youngest, lit up and made a bee-line for me, wrapping himself around my waist.  “I wanna ride with Momma,” he pronounced, thinking this meant I was coming home with them.

“Oh, Buddy, Momma’s still working—I’m not going home yet.  But I’m so glad to see you!”  He gave me his funny pouty face, complete with the exaggeratedly drooped shoulders and the protruding lip, but then quickly recovered, and we all went about our evenings.

It occurred to me later that night, with a swell of melancholic nostalgia mixed with the shadow of impending grief rising in my heart, that God has granted me an awfully long, gracious extension on this gift that is my “Baby.”

My son is eight years old now, and by most measures of development should be starting to distance himself from me and from my affections.

But, by the grace of God, my son continues to desire to be with me, to sit in my lap, to snuggle at bedtime, to crawl into bed with me in the morning, to grab my hand when he feels unsafe (though he’s quick to drop it once he’s comfortable), to ask “Momma, will you play with me?”  (Oh, how I wish I would say yes more often.)  And yet, in spite of my negligence, God continues to grace me with this gift—with a Lovey-boy who still looks and sounds like he’s five and who still wants to be held by arms who still long to hold.  It is a sweet, gracious gift to a woman who grieves already on a near-daily basis that her babies are going to grow up and leave her.

This won’t last much longer.  I know that.  Summer is coming, and summer brings growth spurts, and growth spurts change things.  There will come a day he will no longer crawl into my bed at dark-thirty in the morning and drag my arm around his middle, curling up into my side.  A day when he will no longer desire for me to tuck him in, to snuggle before bed, to play legos with him on the floor.  There will come a day when he will not want to ride with me—when, indeed, he will not even want me in the car with him, and when he will drive away as I fight back tears, frantically waving in his rear-view mirror, thinking of these very days I now feel like will never be over.

God is gracious to allow me a few extra years—that is not lost on me.  I am grateful to him for not growing my “Baby” up too quickly. I receive this gift with profound thanks, and a prayer that I will continue to steward it well.

family life motherhood parenthood parenting raising boys relationships spiritual trust