180°

“Push me higher, Mommy!”

She held tight to the rope, feet reaching for the sky.

Sandy little toes painted the color of peonies.

That was a beautiful summer day.

Nothing on the schedule but life’s sweet surprises.  And a gentle wind blew any cares away.

I can still hear her then 6-year-old voice. Her radiant smile mingling bright with the rays of the summer sun.

These simple pleasures.

Butterfly days.

Firefly nights.

The wonders of this unhurried, more intentional season.

We drink in the hours like sweet lemonade. Slowly sipping the refreshment of lush green gardens and clear cerulean skies.

Bluer than blue.

Summer’s beckoning to simplicity.

Ripening rich. Berries brightly teetering on the edge of the wood in prickety-thickets. Daring to reach in and pull a juicy treat from the vine.

The crisp cool of a cotton picnic blanket in the warmth of June.

Reading in the peaceful quiet of late afternoon. Pages dappled with light.

Laughter lifting up through the trees, caught by the breeze and tossed gently with birdsong.

These have been the recipes of our summers spent together.

Having just celebrated my Sweet Louise’s sixteenth birthday, I spent some time glancing back.

Milling through the memories. Placing old photographs in my mind next to those snapshots of our more recent years.

“Time goes by so quickly, honey. Be sure to enjoy today.” my mother would often say. And she couldn’t have been more right.

Like the blink of an eye this time has passed.

And when these eyes are open to truly see ~  some days feel as though we are 180° from those summers of our past.

That not-so-long-ago little girl recently took me flying for the first time.

Into a sky full of stars.

The same sky that held her bedtime wishes of childhood has now become the backdrop for her dreams.

Dreams and wishes that are rapidly becoming her reality.

How things have changed.

This young woman before me is now enamored with advanced measurements.

Visions of vectors and velocities.

Knot speeds and nautical miles.

These calculations have replaced those early equations of the fairies’ winged flight. Or the distance traveled on an inch-worm’s journey.

The colorful picture-books once stacked on her bedside table have been exchanged. Traded-in for treasured tales and lengthy novels. Countless pages bound by the writings of timeless authors.

Austen.

Dickens.

Tolstoy.

And the old globe still sits atop her bookcase.

This rotating sphere once piqued her fascination of foreign lands. Contrasting cultures.

Now, given the sense of adventure that shines in her heart I can only imagine that those blue oceans and vast lands may be not-so-distant destinations on her own voyage.

Psalm 143:8

Let the morning bring me word of Your unfailing love,
for I have put my trust in You.
Show me the way I should go,
for to You I entrust my life.

…

I look on with wistful admiration of my daughter’s youth.

She moves with fervor toward her future, and all the while I feel the tugging.

Away from the foundations of her growing years.

Away from these careless childhood days filled with  the fragrance of locust tree blossoms.  And the old, blue wooden swing that has carried her and her dreams into so many summer sunsets.

Away from home.

The most bittersweet days are those in which she finds glimmers of independence.

The days she touches possibility and tastes a new life beyond this place.

Beyond the shelter of the old sycamore.

Beyond the arms of my safety.

Beyond my good intention.

And into the world.

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Isaiah 26:3

You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.

The markings on the wooden doorway have recorded her growth through the years.

Year by year.

Inch by amazing inch.

She always loved measuring on tippie-toes, imagining life when she would be tall. Her early way of imagining the excitement of the life that lies ahead.

…

I have watched my darling daughter transform over the course of these past years.

But with this marveling comes the aching growth of a mother’s heart.

Will she remember the love of this life? Will she remember where she came from? Does she appreciate all that she has been blessed with ~ this community of people that have supported her and lifted her up? The sacrifices, the giving.

Will she be OK?

Have I shared enough with her about the ‘real’ world outside without frightening her?

Will she one day come to understand that I’ve always wanted to protect her from the hurt in this world? But discovering in her own time that some of the greatest lessons of this life are found in the brown, tattered and wrinkled wrappings of hurt? In packages of pain.

I’ve been told that this back-and-forth of emotion is part of this process. This raising of a child.

My Sweet Louise.

The little one who stood with her tiny feet on mine ~ as we stepped in time to the music on the radio ~ waltzing across the kitchen floor.

Now, the joy is in watching her begin to dance to the music that God has written just for her.

The great composer.

Each step in time with His masterpiece of her life.

I gaze with wonder as she learns to twirl in the freedom of His arms. Dizzy with laughter as He blesses her days.

A joy that only His love can bring.

This letting-go is my own complex calculation.

And there are only two variables.

Surrender and trust.

Surrendering my dreams for her life.

Trusting Him for the next steps.

The next words.

Embracing the next years as we venture through our days of discovery, walking ever closer to our Jesus.

…

Colossians 2:6-7

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.

So often when I think of the directional pull in this season of our relationship, I tend to think in the horizontal.

That feeling of moving away from.

In a different direction.

Of separation.

Then I remember vertical.

This is the direction of growth in our lives that truly matters. Our connection with our Heavenly Father.

Our moving through this space and time, holding on less.

Trusting more.

Looking to the Lord above.

For guidance. 

For comfort.

For direction. 

When this becomes my perspective, Emma’s growth is seen as a delight. Not a loss.

For our relationship with the Savior is an unfurling.

A blooming.

From these roots of home to blossoms of beauty.

…

And though this mother’s heart has grown stronger with time, there are still days that it flutters fragile. 

But when I keep my eye on the Cross, it all comes into focus. Things become more clear.

It seems as if those bare little, sandy peony-painted toes were showing me all along.

Pointing upward.

Upward into the sky.

A sky for Emma to fly her plane in a realm so close to heaven.

And for flying free in the grasp of our God!

Sixteen summers have blown blissfully by.

But in them, I have come to learn one very important lesson about this journey that we’re on.

It isn’t about Emma thinking that I’m the best thing in the world…

but that she thinks the world of her Jesus. 

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Mark Harris, “Find Your Wings”