It was one of those days. With five children, ages seven and under, I had a lot of those days!
I slipped out of my front door in my bathrobe and with bare feet ran across my lawn to Miz Edith's house. I knocked on her door and as she opened it, I burst into tears. "I’m such a bad mother," I cried. “I’m not a good wife and I’m not amounting to anything." "Oh Susan," she replied, throwing her arms around me. "You are not a bad mother. You are not a bad wife. It’s just this season in your life. It is hard but it will pass. You are going to be all right."
Miz Edith would sit me down on her well–worn couch and fix me a cup of tea and simply listen to me. A widow in her seventies, she had experience, she had compassion, and she had perspective. It was her perspective that I needed most.
A couple of days ago my husband John and I had the privilege of spending the day with 13 post-college men and women who have come for a year as interns at our church. During our discussion time John asked each of them to share about someone, other than a parent, who had had a positive impact on their life and why. One girl shared movingly about the influence of a fifth grade teacher. Two of the guys talked about an older man who met with them regularly to study the Bible with them, encourage them, and pray for them. Another gal talked about the impact of a woman who often had her to dinner with her family. Simply being with a happy, chaotic family spoke volumes to her. Listening to them, I was once again reminded of the power of a mentor.
As a part of our program, each of these young adults will be meeting with a small group of either middle or high school students. They will each be given an older same-sex adult as their personal mentor. In the past 15 years of our program the friendships between each intern and their mentor has been one of the favorite parts of their year.
Mentors. An intimidating word? It shouldn’t be. A mentor is simply an older friend who loves the Lord and is willing to pour into a younger person. No, she’s not perfect. She still doesn’t have it altogether. But she has perspective simply because she’s older and she’s available to befriend a younger person.
We have lived in the same house for just over 25 years. We moved in when our fifth child was an infant and then added our last child eighteen months later. So this old house has seen lots and lots of life.
Like most families, our kitchen was the center of most daily activity and, I might add, most of the mess. I never could get on top of keeping the microwave and fridge and stove top and floor clean. I remember feeling terribly embarrassed one time when I had to call a repairman and he reminded me if I would just keep the particular appliance cleaner it would last longer. With six kids and home schooling, it was impossible. Grrrrrrrr.
But another bee hive of activity in our house was the master bathroom. It wasn’t and still isn’t very large, but it is larger than the kids bath, which was very small and definitely not big enough for more than one or two at a time. So our kids gravitated to our bathroom for the extra space. And it was mostly our four girls who wandered down the hall. They needed help with pigtails and ponytails and braids and curls. I kept all the rubber bands, bobby pins, hair clips, hair ribbons and rollers in my bathroom since I was the resident beautician.
As the girls became teens they continued to come to our bathroom for before school and before church beautification. I still helped with hairstyles and approved or disapproved clothing choices. The full length mirror on the door and the wall mirror over the double sink gave them lots of viewing space.
And in those hours of sharing the bathroom, my girls and I also shared a lot of life.
One of the reasons that I think the empty nest is difficult is that it is so fluid. As Barbara and I have said, it’s much like “Jell-O.” You think you get “it” arranged in a mold and then it leaks out and you have to adjust in some way. And then it happens again.
The fluidity of the season is uncomfortable. We are not used to it. When we were in the season of parenting toddlers we had challenges which we soon discovered other mothers had. There seemed to be a pattern. The teen years brought about different challenges. Each of these seasons had clear beginnings and endings. But this empty nest has different beginnings and waves and many more contributing factors—elder care, a child who comes back home, a move, retirement, a job change, an illness, the loss of a spouse, a dream that doesn’t work out, grandchildren, etc. The empty nest doesn’t really end and it’s not tidy. It’s messy. And that can be disconcerting.
Our five children are 29-36 years old now. They are all married and our youngest is expecting our twelfth grandchild in October. The twins graduated from high school eleven years ago! Since I’ve been an empty nester so long, and Barbara and I have written this book, you’d think I’d have all the answers and a clear formula for this season and really, I should have figured it all out by now.
Our oldest grandchild just turned nine this summer. He is inquisitive and bright and sometimes can talk you to death! But he and his brother, who is almost eight, are at a great age for grandparents to enjoy and to begin to influence for the kingdom of God.
Recently my husband was traveling to a speaking engagement and he decided to take these two grandsons and their dad with him. He knew he’d be busy with his preparations and work with the event, but he also thought they’d enjoy the trip and make a memory or two together. The topic of the conference was the needs of orphans in the world today.
Dennis reported to us later that it was without question the hardest venue for speaking he’d ever experienced in thirty years. There were reportedly 100,000 people in attendance (see http://www.lifelight.org/). The event was held in a field with everyone sitting on lawn chairs they had brought or standing around chatting with people with whom they’d come. And it was very windy. It was a loud and constantly moving audience without walls or boundaries to contain the sea of people. He wondered if anyone listened to a word he’d said.
In the next few weeks the two of us will be on the road. We hope to see many of you. We’ll be speaking at McLean Bible church (co-hosted by The Falls Church) in Vienna, Virginia on October 1. You can register by clicking on the “register” button on the banner above. We hope that many of you in the greater Washington, DC area can join us for this event. On October 10 and 11 we’ll be speaking as a part of the True Woman conference in Chicago, Illinois. We’ll also be on the radio daily on Revive Our Hearts, September 11-17 and FamilyLife Today, September 15-19. Both of these shows may be heard nationwide (check your local listings) or on the web at www.familylife.com and www.reviveourhearts.com.
One of the dreams that the two of us have had from the beginning of the Empty Nest project is to encourage the creation of an “Empty Nest Community”—a nationwide group of girl friends. We hope that both our speaking and our personal radio conversations will help spur you to gather together with other empty nest women. Each of us need women with whom we can share honestly the challenges of the empty nest but also with whom we can become as “iron sharpens iron,” sharpening and challenging one another to take definite, specific steps to discover the next great adventures that God has already planned for us in this new season.
I continue to be surprised and amazed and encouraged and pleased at who our adult kids have become. Since all of our children live out of town and most live out of state, we are with them very infrequently. We trade phone calls and emails but person to person visits are not common. So when we do get together, especially with several of them at once, I find that I’m always learning something new about who they are now that they are not in our shadow or in our backyard anymore.
After several of these visits this summer, I’ve come to a number of conclusions about our relationships that I need to remember in the future.
My kids are the same people they always were, but they are also different because they are married, five of them, to someone with a different background and values. And this is good. Very good.
My kids are parenting their children in ways similar to our style, but they are also trying new and different approaches. Different is not wrong.
For many of us the ending of summer and beginning of fall is hard. Perhaps you’ve just sent your first or your last child off to college or to work. You are still shedding tears. Or you may be well into the empty nest, but you are sad because the ending of summer marks a return to responsibilities and saying goodbye to family reunions.
Our friend Karen remembers the fall when she hit a slump. She thought she was prepared because she’d already sent three kids off and she’d been thinking about the empty nest as her last child, Holly, prepared to go. But it was harder than she thought it would be leaving Holly. They were so close and this was it—a truly empty nest.
After moping around for a few weeks, Karen called up some friends—“The Stones”—they had affectionately dubbed themselves. These were women with whom she’d been friends since they started having babies. Together they had walked through potty training, teen challenges, graduations, and weddings, sharing both joys and heartaches. Now most were into the empty nest season, too. Karen said, “You need to help me thorough this. Don’t let me withdraw. Call me and ask me how I’m doing. Make sure I’m at Bible study and that I’m getting exercise. Help me stay involved. Pray for me to catch a fresh vision for my life.”
Had one of those “down days” lately? Just feeling blue, unmotivated, not excited about your life?
I had one of those days a couple of weeks ago. In the midst of my “blaa feelings about everything” I had asked about ten women if they’d meet me in the church parking lot for a quick photo of empty nesters that Barbara and I wanted to use in some speaking.
We gathered for what I thought would be a brief ten minutes. Not all of the women knew each other. But we quickly fell into connecting as we thought up a funny way to do the picture. One of the girls shared about a hysterical birthday card she’d just received depicting her “old age.” Another told about a funny email she’d gotten. Then my friend Judy began to describe her new bathing suit—the first she’d bought in years to impress her teenage grandkids on vacation. It was one of those two piece ones with a skirt that comes over your head. She proudly put it on, went swimming and then could not get it off over her head! Wet, it was way too tight. Finally she had to call her husband to come pull it off! Now Judy is absolutely hysterical and as she recounted this story complete with motions the rest of us were laughing so hard we had tears running down our faces.
