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The Weaning Process Continues


The weaning process continues...for Moms and Dads everywhere.   

I bumped into friends at the grocery stores who were in the process of steeling themselves and saying good bye to their young adult kids as I am.

My thoughts took me back to the ranch where cows stood crying along fence-lines as their babies were weaned from them.  These giant mamas walked a rut into the hard pasture beside the fence as by pacing back and forth; wide mouths with lolling tongues calling worriedly for their babies.   Tuffs of white, black or red fur dotted the barbs on the wire where they had rubbed.

The sound of the worried Moms always got to me.  That sound of desperation in their horse voices broke my heart.

I get it now.

Tomorrow, I take my oldest to the airport where he will get on a plane and fly away.  I won't see him for a long long time.  While my feet will stay planted on the ground, my heart will desperately want to catch and hold him.  

Two weeks later, I will stand at the door and watch my middle son leave for college.  

I'll pace the perimeter and I'll cry in desperation whispered prayers late at night.

They are growing up and they are leaving to become the men that God wants them to be and I try to release them to Him to care for a protect but it is excruciating.

  I feel like those cows leaving tuffs of my heart along the fence. 

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