How does a mother finish another school year with any kind of resolve? The month of May provides no proper pocket of time to process the blur of another chapter coming to a close. Our cars and calendars and corners are filled to the brim with the remnants of the rollercoaster we rode with our families this year. And yet we must mark these moments in time with our memories, to look back and look ahead with whatever grief and gratitude we hold.
I look back at this school year in disbelief of the speed at which it passed, with gladness for the growth we each experienced, and with a tenderness to the way in which God so kindly sustained us. I saw courage in my children—some navigating new schools and hard hurdles. I had surprising joy in those late nights of hangouts and homework with my teenagers. I absolutely adored watching each of my kids do what they love to do. And I struggle with how so much of all of this feels so fleeting. How many more years will I get to step on Legos, set tooth-fairy delivery reminders, and unpack moldy grapes from their lunchboxes?
I sit now to consider every running hug received fresh off of the bus. Every tear wiped away from a precious cheek. Every glare my middle school girls gave me on their daily walk home as I drove right past them for another carpool. Every frantic teenager text I received about a forgotten item or frustrating moment. Every ridiculously early morning out the door to three separate schools. Every single soccer shot, double turn and three-pointer offered up. Every win and every loss. Every valuable lesson taught. Every fear faithfully fought…by our God Almighty who shows up even when we struggle to show up ourselves.
What a tremendous gift it has been to be alongside my children for another year.
I stare ahead at this summer with so much hope and so much hurt all at the same time. I feel the mixed mood in our home—the excitement of little brother’s first time at camp, the sentiment of big brother’s last time, and the empty space on our calendar where camp usually sits for the three sisters in the middle, instead now holding our collection of quiet aches.
Moms… how do we finish another school year with any kind of resolve? Perhaps you have a graduation or celebration to tangibly mark this point in time. Perhaps you retire the nap mats and unpack the backpacks and forge ahead to a new season. And perhaps you know deep down that in so many ways, we cannot simply take a bow and wrap it up all neat and tidy.
So we do our part to name all of the beauty and all of the boring of this year. We see the holy and the ordinary in each of our days. We remember all of the ways God held what we could not hold ourselves. We press on in prayer for all that feels up in the air…and we pray for our children, for our summers, for the teachers, and for us as mothers.
We may not have the superpower to make sense of it all, but we are given the grace to see God’s faithful hand along the way.
And maybe that’s enough for May
.