The end of a school year always brings the comments “I can’t believe my child is this age, finishing this grade, this level of school”, etc.  I have enough kids that I have celebrated (endured) almost every milestone children have several times over.  I feel emotional more when my children start a new endeavor than I do when they finish one.  The end of the school year is a celebration for me, I love it almost as much as the kids do.  The first month school is out my son has a ritual 1:00 a.m. “No school tomorrow” dance he performs.  For mom, it means no more washing a baseball uniform and/or baseball practice clothes, favorite jeans, tee shirt and chucks every night.  It means no more worries about lunch accounts, lunch money, or packing lunches (except for Steve’s and mine).  The end of the school year means no more homework, no more enforced bed times, and no more waking everyone up and getting them out the door for school.  My kids are happier, well rested, and life is easier in the summer.  The beginning of a new school year is different, first of all, enrollment is expensive, they all always need some updating of their wardrobe, and it just makes me tired thinking about it, and school still has 4 more days, SO NO MORE ON THAT SUBJECT.  This fall, my young will be starting her last year of middle school and my oldest starting his senior year.  I am excited about the future for my kids. And while I have teared up over milestones in my kid’s lives in the past, more recently I have had a change of mind/heart about this.  For any readers who don’t know me, I have 3 stepdaughters and 2 children of my own (the only two I blog about, because I own them).  I am a bad 1980’s John Hughes movie, think Breakfast Club.  I have the freak, the princess, the rebel, the brain/normal one, and the sport.   It’s a dysfunctional yours, mine and ours that has never let our life become boring.  Some milestones this year include but are not limited to (and this is for all five kids, and Steve was the college graduate, just wanted to throw that in too): Fiddler on the Roof performance, volleyball club team success, three honor roll breakfasts, a winning high school baseball season with a batting average of .388 which is top 25 in Greater Wichita Athletic League.  One college graduation, one high school graduation, (and we sweated that this one would actually happen).  Stepdaughter had a baby.  Three huge fights with a teenager, and more boy/girl issues and break ups than I can count.  Jobs, arrests, jail, two speeding tickets, a car accident, two 3 day suspensions from high school, and 4 of the most boring music/choir concerts I have ever sat through.  Looking back on the year with four teenagers there were more downs than ups, or so it would seem.  The thing is, when I look back on this year, I see success.  I see growth.  I see the closing of a chapter and the fresh pages of a new one waiting to be written.  (I didn’t kill any of them either, literally or metaphorically). As they grow up and move into new worlds and new situations and new circumstances, I am excited for them. I like to see the impact that they can make with their friends and in their niche in the world.  And when I hear good things come back around to me through external sources, it makes me even prouder.  So here I am at the end of the 2009 school year.  No field trips to Cow Town.  No field day at the school.  We pretty much finish up as we started, kids get in one car and go to school and I get in the other car and go to work.  Am I sad?  No.  I certainly understand a mother’s heart and understand the tears and sadness of a child leaving childhood behind.  I understand wanting to protect them from the big bad world.  And while I will most likely suffer an emotional pang or two when Nate starts his senior year of high school in the fall, I have changed from that mom that cried when he started kindergarten, he didn’t look back at me when he started that new era of his life, and he hasn’t shied away from a single challenge since. A few weeks ago Mark Hoover at Newspring brought a sermon on Creativity. Patsy’s condensed version, God is the creator, we are created in His image, therefore, we are creative.  Creativity here means that God brought light and order to a world of darkness and chaos.  Where am I that is dark and chaotic?  Where am I that needs order and light?  I thought about this, and I can see evidence that my son and my daughter bring order and light to their worlds.  So I’m not saddened by what they are leaving behind, I’m excited for what God can do with them.  That is, IF THEY WILL LET HIM.  I pray for all my kids that they will choose to live for God.  And when I know that they aren’t, I pray he will turn their hearts towards him.  I have great memories of my kids, I love to look at their scrapbooks, but I choose to look forward with optimism and hope.  To dream big dreams for them, with them, and push them forward, never holding them back.  Letting go, not with sadness, but with excitement for what is possible in their lives.  I love this passage, Lamentations 3:23-24 “23 Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”  What a wonderful thought, looking forward to new mercies, fresh each morning.  This is about looking forward with hope for what is in our future, our inheritance.  I can’t change the past, and I certainly don’t want to dwell on things that make me sad because today has enough trouble of its own.  I’m going to look forward to new mercies every morning. And look out world.  I’m unleashing a whole mess of almost grown ups on you.