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Wednesday, March 02, 2016

3/3=18

That's some very advanced math I know, but the translation is that tomorrow on March 3rd our baby turns 18.  Jack Thomas Myhre, named as a combination of our mission's founder Jack Miller and my dad John Thomas Aylestock.  He has Jack M's oratory and spiritual depth and willingness to think outside the lines, and Grampy's passion for sports and solid goodness and tinkering with cars and sense of humor and commitment to family.  He began his fetal life in Bundibugyo in the days when war erupted and ended up as a refugee in Kenya at birth, then grew up between those two countries.  And now, tonight, we suddenly find ourselves at the end of a remarkable childhood to have survived, and looking ahead to only God knows what.

Scott and I are oldest kids, so we didn't really know how the youngest gets to be a nearly-adult member of the household with his parents when everyone else leaves, and how great that is.  In the last year of high school, all those football and rugby and basketball games, all those class events, all those Sunday School breakfasts and pizza cookouts filled our hearts.  Then at least being in the same country for his beginning of college has been another gift.

18 has two sides, a celebration of the way that this boy who was all tornado and intensity and creative individuality and tough striving has become the kind of young adult you WANT to spend the day with, the young man whose insights spark and whose strength vectors in the right direction.  But the others side is this:  as of tomorrow, we no longer are parenting children.  That's the way life should be, and the gain far outweighs the nostalgia that pricks at the heart.  But it's a loss too, each year and each kid, leaving behind an era that was beautiful even in it's heartaches.

















Yes, that's life, pressing on we acknowledge the ache of what is left behind, but we believe by faith the best is yet to come.

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