Labor Day weekend (in Canada), is a time when University and College aged students start to migrate to places of higher learning, driving in cars with little back window visibility, due to the over-packing for the school year away from home.
This year, Labor Day weekend I felt constantly aware of the need to pray for someone I do now know, yet whose life, thoughts, faith and passions are shared daily through her blog posts.
Through her posts at A Holy Experience , Ann Voskamp has indicated that her eldest son was readying to fly from her nest, into his new adventure also known as his university education and experience.
And this Labor Day weekend, while my own third-year university-experiencing daughter was talking textbooks and tuition, schedules and psychology, my heart was heavy for a woman I do not know, who would be experiencing it all for the first time. The difference between she and me? My daughter has not flown away … and my face is not on the back of a New York Times bestseller.
I wondered if Ann would be given the space (really a gift of grace) by those around she and her son, as he met his roommate, unloaded a years worth of necessities into his half of a room, as the tours were taken, as the cheques were written, as the mingling was happening … as the memories were flooding … as the tears were welling. Space to just be … mom.
“No, no, I’m not ready for now to be over, for the kid who wore a tool belt strapped around him everywhere to leave, the boy who can drive a tractor and wrestle hogs and reads Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” just for fun — just to go. He drove me crazy. He drove me to God. He drove me to love. I don’t care what anyone says — You can cut umbilical cords but you can’t cut heart strings.” Ann Voskamp
I wondered if her face
familiar to her son as strength and grace
frailty and forgiveness,
familiar to those whose faces were unfamiliar to her,
I wondered if her face might draw the unfamiliar to her space,
her mother space.
And I wondered if the unfamiliar to her saw her only as the face on the back of her bestselling book,
as a celebrity in their midst.
I doubt that Ann sees herself as celebrity.
I doubt her son sees her as celebrity …
He sees … mom.
And while he was preparing for adventures, she was reliving
his life …
his whole,
entire,
conception to the now,
life.
“You don’t become a parent by bearing a child. You become a parent by bearing witness to his life.” Ann Voskamp
And I prayed that those who saw her in the midst of the crowds, were able to see her, with eyes of grace, as just another purple-hearted mom, and not a selfish opportunity to enter her space with her child-man. That would have given her a million things to be thankful for!
“Parents wear Purple Hearts: the brave who are wounded and die a bit more everyday – and only get braver.” Ann Voskamp
itsawonderfilledlife 