The Summer Breath

May 20, 2015

It’s the last day of school here in Springtown. As I watched my son and his pal run out of school as if the building had just ignited behind them, I was reminded of the PRAISE JESUS IT’S OVER feeling that is really like no other.  

Grace’s 8th grade “graduation” was also today, in the high school where I once survived, suffered and succeeded. While she and I both rolled our eyes a little at the necessity of such a ceremony, we rejoiced plenty at the resulting early dismissal. I watched her confident stride, surrounded by a gaggle of her pals, and prayed silently that all the good that can come to her in these next four years of high school will come to her.  I prayed that the heartbreaks will be few; and when they happen, may she be only bent, not broken.  And if she is bent by the tumult of these decisive years, may she not lean too far this way or that.

I also prayed that she continues to be spared the insecurity, short temper, bad hair, snaggle tooth and sizable midsection that plagued me at her age.  (I shouldn't lie in the midst of all this praying.)

In a favorite book of mine, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells writes this:

"I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as if they could see that crack.”

The world would be different for us all had we sight of the hidden cracks.  (Life would be particularly better for adolescent girls.  I remember it.  I was in it. I am witnessing it.) Perhaps the prayer is that we come out whole and stronger at the broken places; and that we do as little as possible to tear off the saplings to our right and to our left.

I know, I know, people survive being teenagers, and being parents of teenagers.  But when the little cherubs shoot out on the delivery table and we wrap our eyes and arms and hearts around them, all slimy and tiny and new, it is hard to believe that the time will come when we will watch them every day as if they are walking a tightrope above sharky waters.  And as we watch, we pray the balance we’ve tried to give them each day since that first slimy one is enough to keep them from all that threatens beneath.

The miracle is how often the sharks don’t get fed. Or at least they don't get full.

Watching former students, cousins, friends just young enough to not be my peers but older than my own kiddos is a great soul builder:  they are going out in the world and gobbling it up with advanced degrees from hither and yon, with work in the coolest ports of call, with dreams followed with verve.  I love seeing them all from afar with awe.  My prayers (all very honest!) follow wherever they bloom.

Here’s to the beginnings and the endings and the cracks in the side.  Let’s face it, it’s all part of the story.  And for my little and not-so-little people, today has been that perfect no homework tonight and we can sleep in tomorrow end.  Praise the Lord.