The dress was navy blue with a wide sash that had little cutout daisies with bright yellow centers. Perfect for my older daughter’s first day of nursery school. Dropping off four-year-old Prentiss at the side door of our church, I felt a rush of emotions—loss, gratitude, confusion. It felt as if just hours ago Prentiss had come rushing into this world, and already I had to say goodbye to her.
In the sanctuary, the school’s headmistress addressed us parents: “This is only the beginning. Parenting is really just a series of goodbyes.” Come on! This was hard enough.
Now I am about to drop off Prentiss at college. I know she’ll be fine, partly because she went to nine schools growing up. As she says, she has the new-girl thing down to a science.
What the headmistress left out is that each goodbye offers an opportunity for both child and parent to grow. Each rite of passage is a chance for your faith to deepen as the world and God embrace you and your child. On Prentiss’s first day at her last high school, a young lady walked up to her and said, “I’ve heard so many nice things about you, and I am really looking forward to getting to know you.”
That schoolmate of my daughter’s reminded me that as our children walk through each first-day door, they become more and more themselves, welcomed into a world of possibilities that God has in store for them.
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