If you have been around this blog you will know that we have two older children and two younger children.

It has been a wonderful blessing to have the little two who are now 10 and 7 years old.  We also have a married daughter who is 25 and a son who is 20.

It is wonderful to see how these children have grown from infants to adults. Our relationships have changed as well.

With our older daughter and her husband we are good friends and have a great time together. We discuss all types of things and we just love getting together with them and laughing and having fun.

Our oldest son now 20, is a wonderful young man. He is caring and loving and very giving. He can be infuriating at times, but he can also be a lot of fun. Our relationship has changed as well and we are all good friends but we are still his parents and his guidance counsellors while he stills lives at home.

Now our son is and moving forward to leading his own life, he has plans to marry and start a family of his own one day and I feel it is only just around the corner (he doesn’t have anyone to marry yet, just plans and ideas).

What will it be like when he goes. If I think too much on that one I must admit tears come.

Now please don’t get me wrong, we would never hold any of our children back.

When our daughter got married we struggled, not with her marriage but after she left, we missed her.

My husband was told by an acquaintance that if it was so hard for us when our children left then we had put too much effort, too much heart  into the relationship, or we had too much skin in it.

In thinking about that it makes me wonder how you couldn’t have that type of relationship with your children. To love them and care for them for 20 odd years, to develop your relationship without them becoming entangled into our emotions, how would you do that?

How can you raise your children, have a family with out them weaving themselves into your hearts. It is the tapestry of family life, where you all live together, work together, learn together.

I would rather be devastated when our children leave home than to not have a relationship with them at all. To not feel the love.

Understand this as well, my husband feels the loss just as much as me, we both struggle with this.

So as we watch our oldest son grow and prepare to step out on his own one day we prepare our hearts, somehow,  to handle not having him at home all the time.

We pray for his  future wife (whoever that may be) and we pray that God will guide him along life’s journey.

We do know one thing though and it is because of the relationship we have with him, the ties that bind us together as family, that he will always be our son and we will always be there for him, no matter what, and that goes for all our children.

Psalm 127:3  Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.