By Tanya Jolliffe RDN, LD
It is safe to say that the past few months have been some of the toughest in parenting: months of limited contact with grown children, enforcing rules about masks with younger children, deciding what is best to do about school age children, sending young adults off to college during unprecedented times, etc. The list of pressures for mothers of all stages goes on and on.
I have always been independent. One of the first phrases I said as a baby was, “I do myself.” So, when it was time to head off to college, I was 18 and certain I was ready to spread my wings and fly. The car was packed, and my parents drove me to campus a few hours away to move into my dorm room for week two of volleyball pre-season and freshman orientation. I remember being excited to be moving into my room. But as the room got closer and closer to being finished, there was an ache that began in my heart. Suddenly this 18-year-old, ready to fly young woman wasn’t so ready anymore.
As we walked down to the car and said our good-byes, there were no tears from my mother. She was tough, proud, and encouraging. After final hugs they drove off. It was real. I was on my own and I wouldn’t see them for weeks. I made sure the car made it around the corner and out of sight before I broke down in tears. I never asked my parents, but I have often wondered how long it took them to let their own tears flow.
The pre-season training was physically and emotionally taxing. When this would happen to me in high school, my mother had always been there at the end of the day to provide encouragement, love, and support. By Wednesday evening I was an emotional mess and called home. Sobbing over the phone, I told my mother about how I was a horrible player, the coach was surely going to figure out she had made a mistake in offering me a scholarship, and I was never going to make it through college. Classes hadn’t even started yet! My mother calmly and lovingly provided me with reassurance, encouragement, and strength, successfully talking me off the ledge, as I have come to refer to it. In that moment, my mother was the mentor I needed to help me see things more clearly.
Now that I am on the other side of the journey, I know how hard those experiences were for my mother. Over the years, I have been on the other side of the college drop off where the mixture of excitement, pride, and heartache intertwine. I have received those college phone calls and talked my own daughter off the ledge a time or two, and then cried my own tears for her when the call was over. I continue to offer prayers of safety and protection as my daughter heads back into the classroom to teach during a pandemic. Just as my mother did for me all those years ago.
The process of parenting an adult child makes me think about Jesus’s mother Mary. She loved her son deeply yet had to stand back and allow him to live out his purpose.
Can you imagine the strength it took to stand and watch her son be in agony without being able to help him? Some of you can relate because you have been there watching helplessly as your own child has fought cancer or addiction. Others have had to watch as their child suffered under the consequences of a mistake they made.
In John 19:25 we read that “near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” That is the key I suppose, to have others to provide support, encouragement, and Biblical perspective. We need people to help us bear the burdens and stay strong for our children especially when they are out of sight.
Hopefully you have people providing you with support, perspective, and encouragement through the ups and downs of life. Or perhaps you are the person holding up another going through a tough time.
Mentoring relationships provide an opportunity to grow in our faith. If mentoring is of interest, consider the Reaching New Heights Mentoring Program where you can serve as a mentor or be the person that receives mentoring. Biblical truth guides us upward and keeps us from falling. The journey of life can be much more enriching when we are traveling and supported by others.
