Successful Launch!

Samantha hasn’t “lived” at home for four years. Yet, all the while she was at McKendree U, it seemed as if she still did. Any given day I might go home and find her there for an hour…for the night…or even the weekend. Last Saturday I drove a U-Haul truck loaded with all of her possessions (and maybe some of ours!) and moved her to Springfield. She is still going to school, attending University of Illinois at Springfield working toward a master’s in Public Administration (MPA…go figure). Knowing Sam as I do, I still expect her to drop in occasionally, though now it is not nearly as convenient. But she’s gone…moved out…on her own (as it were). I am not writing this bemoaning our not-so-crowed nest (as is her mother); this is a celebratory note. I feel like the mad scientist who has just had a successful launch of my first rocket! Sure, that is my baby racing toward the stratosphere, but we’ve experienced a success! For years we have tinkered and experimented with the right formula to get her off the ground, and now we have accomplished the goal. I will confess that I want to look skyward, hoping to see a vapor trail in the clouds, but she is far beyond my reach now. My hope lies, as does every parent’s hope, in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way (s)he should go, and when (s)he is old (s)he will not turn from it.” My attention now turns toward those little rockets still in training…and I seem to get just a little madder.