Glide

(I wrote this 3 years ago when my baby girl was going to Kindergarten. She is now starting 3rd grade tomorrow.  Micah will be in 7th and my oldest is getting ready to experience high school...I'm not ready for this... After dropping him off for his Freshman Orientation last week I had to pull over the mini van so I wouldn't get into a car accident because my eyes were temporarily blinded by pools of salty mother-of-a high-schooler tears...I mean seriously, it is all really just a bit too much.  Today I signed him up for Driver's Ed...if that doesn't bring one to their knees, I honestly don't know what will.  But the fact that this precious child of mine is going to be operating a vehicle really is hard enough let alone the fact that his father and I happened to take this class together just a few years ago...ahem... Back to my point...these words ring true tonight...many of us moms and dads are sending their littles and not-so-littles off to school tomorrow. Some of us are more nervous than they are and most of us are surrounding and uplifting our kids in prayer...)

GLIDE

 

We picked out a sage green durable fabric for the upholstery and chose white painted wood for the frame.  The first time I sat in the cushions and kicked my legs up on the ottoman I was nine months pregnant with my first.  Anticipation swelled as big as the belly beneath my embrace as the chair glided smoothly beneath me.  This would mark the first night of many spent in that chair. 

Countless nights of three different crying babies held throughout these last eleven and a half years and tonight I find myself there yet again rocking a little girl, my baby girl who can't sleep because she has excited butterflies fluttering in her tummy as she imagines her first day of kindergarten tomorrow.  As we move in the darkened room I see her as a baby lying there in my arms.  Us rocking the same way we did four short years ago.  Her softness is cradled in my arms and her innocence graces her face as memories flash and love flows fierce.

We glide...

I envision the boys, each one of them as babies.

The first time Jonah opened his deep gray eyes and looked up at me, it was in that chair, in his tiny nursery in our first little yellow house.  I remember propping him up, next to his little stuffed "Winnie-the-Pooh" and taking a picture of him there on that green fabric in his first few months of life.

Many a night we took turns consoling our sweet Micah struggling to fill his little lungs with air.  Holding up that mask of medicine humming through the machine to calm his cough.  Many prayers were uttered upward in that seat.   I can still see those chubby cheeks and little upturned nose...I can almost hear the scritch scratch of the flowering dogwood tapping on the window of his bedroom in our second place we called home.

And here I sit gliding with long limbs hanging over the sides of the same padded arms that used to fit her length nicely...

And I am overwhelmed.

Warm pools flood up as we sway back and forth.

Tomorrow marks a significant day.

Ayla takes her first steps as a kindergärtner.

Jonah will be dropped off at middle school and will walk the hallways as a sixth grader for the very first time.

And Micah will march as a fourth grader down the halls of his school.

But tonight I pray that they will-

not only step...

or just walk...

or even manage to march through this new school year.

Tonight I am praying that they will glide through the days, weeks, months of school filled with a peace in knowing that they have a heavenly Father who is cradling each one of them in the palm of his hand and loving them more fiercely than this mama ever could even imagine...