The Odds are Really Pretty Good

I’m sitting in my son’s kitchen in Washington state. I’m here this  week on vacation. No one else is around. Will took the dog for a walk and poor Matthew has an upset stomach. So I am just putzing around the house for the day. It’s okay. I’d rather be here at loose ends than at home. Here there is a backyard filled with wild flowers and vines of blackberries. Tall Douglas fir trees, and I do mean tall, that you can step out on the porch and admire. There are plenty of things to do this week and we have kind of mapped out a schedule of sorts. But what matters most is spending time with my son.

It’s finally hit me he’s never coming home. He has a life that does not include us. Home is a place visit if he can maybe once a year, but it isn’t “home” anymore. He’s made a life for himself and even though I know he loves us, we do not place very high in his list of priorities anymore. To say it’s okay is a little bit of a lie. He has always been such a high priority in my heart that to know I am no longer in that place in his hurts a little. And yet, I know this is how it works. I can only be on the periphery now. And that really is healthy. But my mother’s heart still stings when I think about it very long.

Lest this be a real downer blog, Matthew planned for our first two days to have meals with some of his friends. How many grown kids would do that? He wanted us to meet his friends. And two of them remarked they wanted to meet his parents because Matthew is so likeable they wanted to know what his parents were like. Talk about uplifting. Now I am worried whether or not I made a good impression!

Life is ever changing. Nothing is static. It can go from great to fantastic, from awful to worse, or bad to better. The odds are fifty/ fifty things will get better or worse. I used to be the Eeyore of Christians and I figured the odds were never in my favor. But what if things are just as likely to improve? I choose to try to look toward the Jesus side. You know, the one where he always wins. That’s how I am going to have to view my changing relationship with my adult son. I have  good chance our relationship will continue to grow, but just in a different way. An appropriate way. He no longer needs me as he did even five years ago. And I have to not need him to need me like that.  Mom, he can do it now, and so can you.