Many of us grow up with the expectation that having life tied up in a neat box with mostly predictable days is the normal way life should be lived.
But then we experience sudden job loses, new babies, moves, ill parents, challenging relationships, unpredictable teens, and more. Life doesn’t seem to calm down or become stable. Instead it gets more complicated, more unpredictable. The reality is that we live more in transition than in stability and that is not what we anticipated! However, transition is the real norm.
The empty nest is a big transition. It lasts longer than most transitions and is full of so many different factors. And the feelings with it change rapidly. One day we are ecstatic at the freedom and peace, the next we wonder who we are supposed to be now.
The empty nest isn’t neat and tidy. It’s a bit like Jell-O--hard to get our hands around or to fit into a neat mold. And when we think we’ve “got it”, it begins to leak in some way.
Sooner or later many of us in the Empty Nest will experience the joys of grand parenting! At the moment, John and I have eleven with another one due in October. Last week, with the tutelage of my more experienced friend Judy, (see July 22 post) we hosted our first “Cousins’ Camp!” We had five of our grandchildren from three different families attend. You have to be at least four years old to come. It was fabulous, enlightening, wonderful, and exhausting. I had flashbacks (and a few hot flashes!) of my own years of mothering five kids ages seven and under. But this was fun in a different way. Since the major responsibility of parenting is not ours, we can simply enjoy them! Yes, we had some cousin rivalry, punching, whining, and “time outs,” but that’s to be expected with three four-year olds in the mix.
John and I had a plan arranged in advance--a very flexible one, but having a schedule was hugely helpful. We read Bible stories and favorite children’s books, painted rocks, learned the names of six trees and nailed labels to these trees. We swam in the pond, picked blueberries, had a picnic in the tree house and played hide and seek. We taught the kids to ride the horses. We had flashlights for each child and played flashlight tag in the dark. Yes, we put names on everything from cups to flashlights!
Last week one morning, I came downstairs at 7:30 and announced to my husband that I was headed out for my walk “before it gets too much hotter” or I may have said, “before it gets any steamier” or something mildly derogatory about the temperature and air quality. He quickly said, “I really want to work on not being critical and negative. I feel like I’ve been slipping into that lately.”
This is a conversation we’ve had repeatedly over the last ten or more years. He was not aiming his comments at me and I knew it. My husband made a promise to himself that he was not going to grow old and grouchy at the same time. He watched several family members on his side become critical and gripey and just unpleasant to be around. We have no control over our years as the Psalms say, “In Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them”, but we do have control over our attitudes and what comes out of our mouth.
I don’t enjoy walking in high humidity and high temperatures. I much prefer the cool of autumn or early spring. But my husband’s reminder was such a good one for me to give thanks in all things.
My friend Judy has mentored me without even realizing it. You see, she is ahead of me by about eight years and she’s been a grandmother longer than I have. Over the years I’ve watched her building friendships with her grandchildren and I’ve copied many of the things she’s done.
Every summer for ten years she has hosted “CampGrandma.” She began with two brothers, ages four and six and camp lasted for just a few days. Now her camp has eight grandchildren and lasts a week. (See her photo). The children have to be four years old to attend. And no parents are allowed!
Judy’s camp is full of planned activities and yes, laid back, unplanned time. She also has chores or responsibilities for each child! Each child is in charge of making something or helping prepare for dinner. One year they created “Wacky Wednesday” in which two girl cousins planned the menu for the day including green eggs and ham, “hand sandwiches” (shaped like a hand), “roast beast” and “kitty litter” cake!
I’ll let you fill in the blank after you read my story.
Several weeks ago I spent one afternoon running errands. I had a long list of the usual: groceries, returns, an appointment, a stop in the garden center for pine straw mulch and lots more. It had just turned hot here in the South and so I was in and out of air conditioning all afternoon. The heat can be tiring. My last stop before heading home was our local Wal-Mart where I stopped to get a few food items, a couple cans of spray paint for a project and a six pack of impatiens for one more planter that needed filling out.
I thought it would be a quick in and out stop. I was wrong. Arriving in the parking lot around 6:15 or so, I chose a spot all the way at the end near the garden center. There is a check-out lane in that department that is always faster than the regular lanes in the food section. Strategy and forethought are keys to zipping in and out. I grabbed a buggy and began to make my selections. My first roadblock to a speedy exit was the garden center check-out lane which was inexplicably closed. Oh well, I thought, moving on. With the paint in my cart and a dash to get the strawberries, I headed for the self-check lines, the second fastest way out of Wal-Mart. To my great disappointment, they were all closed, all 14 of them.
What will my marriage look like? This is a question that we might ask as we approach the empty nest. As I thought about my empty nest in the early years I realized that I could easily fall into one of two traps. I could adopt an attitude in which I would expect my husband John to meet the emotional void that would be created when my children left. I could unconsciously expect him to meet my needs, to empathize with me, to affirm me, to give me a new purpose, and to understand my emotions. And if he didn’t, I would be disappointed or even critical. I had to remember that no man was created to meet all of my needs! A second trap I could fall into would be the mentality of: since the kids are gone he will just spend more time at the office, and I’ll get more involved in my things and we’ll connect when we can. This kind of attitude could lead to a sense of isolation, of drifting apart.
I knew that neither attitude was healthy and that what we needed to do was to talk about our fears and expectations and then to take intentional steps to grow closer in the season of the empty nest.
One of Susan’s and my passions is to see our generation of women use their gifts and talents and resources to change the world. It’s not an impossible dream. There are literally millions of us, some say the number is sixty million plus baby boomer women. What would happen if even a tenth of us became engaged in some cause that would benefit others? I’ve written before about orphans, but there are many other issues that need addressing that we women are uniquely qualified to meet. Mentoring young moms is a huge need in our nation that only requires the gift of your time and your listening ear. The major roadblock to this idea is that most women don’t feel qualified. WE know the mistakes we’ve made in our own parenting and marriage. How could we possibly help someone else?
One way to become qualified is to attend an exciting conference for women this fall. Susan and I will be speaking at The True Woman conference which will be held in Chicago October. 9-11. We understand that 3000 women are already registered, so why not join us? There is plenty of room for several thousand more.
The purpose of the conference is to discover and embrace God’s created design and mission for our lives, to learn to reflect the beauty and heart of Christ for our world, and to intentionally pass on the baton of God’s truth to the next generation.
It might be the first one who leaves or it could be the last. Perhaps it’s the middle child but it’s bound to happen—that feeling of awkwardness, of not knowing what is going on with this child who has left our nest. We feel anxious because we’re used to knowing what they are up to and now we don’t. Now we wonder: Should I call her again? Or would it be better to leave her alone and assume all is well? And those what if’s…?
Leaving is hard for our kids and it’s hard for us, their parents. Our role has changed. In many ways we’ve lost control and this can be good. It forces us to entrust our kids to God in a new way.
Often, we the parent fall into one of two extremes. Some of us tend to be “helicopter parents,” hovering over our child, calling frequently, checking in to see if they got to class on time, made a new friend, are eating right. Others tend more towards the “hand’s off” approach- no news is good news. We raised them to be independent. So we don’t call; instead we wait for them to initiate contact. It is helpful to recognize which extreme you tend towards and which your spouse represents. And then take steps to a more balanced approach.
One of the things Barbara and I have discovered is that empty nest women long to connect with other women in this season. We need others with whom we can share our feelings, our fears, and our dreams! We long to laugh together. And after so many years of focusing on our kids we are ready, even desperate for girlfriends! I believe we see this need exemplified in our culture with the popularity of so many movies and books that revolve around the friendships of girls!
Creating an empty nest community is one of the goals of our book. As we walk through this time in our lives we often wonder, does anyone else ever feel like I do? The answer is YES!
So consider this our personal invitation to you to join a community. Invite several empty nesters you’d like to get to know to read the book with you. Set a date a month ahead to discuss it. We have questions to guide your discussion One-session Reader’s Guide or if you prefer something more, we have a Four-session study guide available as well. We’d love to hear how your book club goes. How is it encouraging for you? What have you discovered that is helpful? What are you dreaming about for your next great adventure?
On June 13th, our family and the Mutz family were snatched out of our normal routines much like the Pevensie children were suddenly snatched out of the London railway station back into the other world of Narnia as told in the book, Prince Caspian. Only instead of landing on a bright sunny warm beach, our families found ourselves being pulled into a dark cold tunnel, the valley of the shadow of death. It felt just as unexpected and other worldly to us as the experience of the children in the Narnia adventures. At the end of the book, going back to their normal lives in London was not their choice. It was Aslan’s. And so our return to the world of meetings and errands and laundry and tasks is also one of mixed emotions, but we too are being led back by Aslan, the King.
After church on Sunday, Dennis and I both agreed that we felt it was time to begin moving on. The longing to stay in the valley is not as strong as it was last week, but instead I feel a need to take what I’ve learned from Molly’s life with me into the future. I’m still a bit afraid of the encroachment of the trivial. And I don’t want to become critical of those who appear shallow because they haven’t been where we’ve been.We saw so much so clearly in the valley and I long for that sharp clear vision to remain with me. But, honestly, I’m not sure how to keep these thoughts and values with me daily. I’m in transition.
