As our children grow we are constantly reminded of our own experiences and choices from when we were their age. Their life can be like a mirror into our past, illuminating all that has been good, bad and ugly in our lives.
Sometimes as I watch or listen I am reminded of the choices that I wish I had, or hadn’t, made when I was their age(s). I am reminded of attitudes I had, ways I dealt with people and of my priorities.
It all kind of makes one wish they could redo their past with the knowledge of the present. It also makes one with they could force their children to learn from our own mistakes.
Life doesn’t work that way.
The knowledge we have now has been learned, primarily, through the experience of living, making decisions (good and bad) and living with the consequences. We could not have the knowledge we do now, had we not had the freedom to error, the freedom to choose and our children are no different.
This includes our walk with God. Much of my relationship is sweet because of what he has loved me through … the sins, the lack of love for his word, the incorrigible attitudes, the heartbreaks. He has proved his love for me in how he has loved me despite my mistakes.
As parents the letting go of our children begins the moment we give birth, followed by a million small and big releases of our grip on our children, so that they can lead the lives that we have prepared them to live.
The lives they live, as adults, are out of our hands and that is the way it supposed to be, for we do not bring children into the world to be our clones, but to be individuals, experiencing all that life has to offer, with the hope that they will return to us and share what they have see and experienced.
In the many wedding ceremonies my hubby performed, I always heard him read these words,
“You are giving your children to life’s adventure, and not merely away from yourselves. This is what you raise your children for, to let them go their way. And in their going they come back again to share their discoveries and joys with you.”
I feel it is like our relationship with God. He loves us into existence, then he lets us choose whether or not we follow the guidelines he has established for us. It is in our choosing his way, his love, that we get to experience real living. It is though the freedom, he gives, to choose to love him that we learn what love is.
As parents we are left to stand by, helpless, for we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who whispers our hearts cries. This is our job, as parents of adult children, and what a privilege it is to lift them up to their heavenly Father, who loves them even more than we do.
“It is possible to give away
and become richer!
It is also possible to hold on too tightly
and lose everything.”
Proverbs 11:24 TLB
itsawonderfilledlife 
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