I just spent the last hour teaching my youngest daughter, Mikayla, to bake cookies.

I confess I do everything much later with my fourth child.  She’ll be lucky to tie her shoes by the time she graduates. Today, however, I found myself not just moving slow, but also grumpy during the process.  I’m pretty sure she didn’t notice as she joyfully rolled the dough and ate too much sugar from the bowl.

I confess that I’ve been grumpy for a few weeks now.

My husband and oldest daughter took a trip overseas for spring break.  I wasn’t grumpy over their trip.  I wasn’t even grumpy that they were snorkeling and diving while the rest of us in Michigan sat home freezing during snowstorms and binge eating during the whole miserable process.

Okay–maybe that fueled a bit of my grumpiness.

But the real reason I’m grumpy is because for the first time since that oldest daughter of mine turned 11 and took over making cookies in our home, I’ve been delightfully free of the cookie baking responsibilities…and now, I’m not.

But it’s not about baking cookies.

It’s the reality that soon she won’t be here anymore to make the cookies.

I swallow hard as the reality of my emptying nest continues to creep up on me.  In a few months, my normally, wonderfully-chaotic busy household will change drastically.  As we put together graduation boards, mail out open house invitations, and three kids move on, the reality smacks me in the face.

Spring break gave me a sneak peek into this quiet, orderly new future and I find myself hating it.   Too often over that week, it was just me and the dogs and even they seemed uncomfortable with the wide open space and freedom.

And that surprises me.

I forgot how I used to whine and complain about the time it took to parent my kids.  I used to dream about quiet times, nap times, and free time to fill with anything and everything I wanted–and not having to share it with kids.  I used to ponder the day when sleep would be easy and free. Now, instead, I find myself lying wide awake in the early morning hours overwhelmed and in tears with the reality of it all, and one question looms permanently in my mind?

How could they ever think of leaving me?

Hey, even mom is entitled to a few irrational moments!

As I look back at the difficulty of mothering four busy, lively, and self-willed children, it was easy to think I was “wasting” those years.  But now I realize it would be the farthest thing from the truth.  Those four children have no idea of the treasures I find looking back over those years with a full heart and little regret. I think about the person I was when I began and I am forever grateful for the shaping and refining that took place in the furnace of mothering though I couldn’t feel it at the time.

Life is filled with the tension of looking back with a sense of sadness and living the part right in front of us.  It reminds us that this is not how it was supposed to be.

Romans 8:22-23 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Any mother can relate to the pain and the waiting and the ultimate joy that comes with childbirth.

We will always battle this tension of passing time, letting go, and living forward because ultimately, we wait for the final culmination of something much greater:  a day where that final redemption occurs and life no longer passes but brings us directly into the presence of the One for whom and by whom we were created.  

As my nest begins to empty and space opens up, those early morning tears are there because it was good.  The testing, the laboring, the teaching, and the loving–all of it was good.

So good.

But the reality is that the best is yet to come!  In the meantime, God asks us to keep living, laboring, teaching, and yes, more loving as long as there is life in this body of ours, even when we don’t feel like it at the time.

We must be willing to pry our fingers off the past, so we can embrace the present, and live forward into the future.

As my older kids pack up their lives, leave our nest, and move into the future, I pray they remember one thing:  all of it was good.  So good.

And for just a little longer, I have one more child who still needs me to teach her the things that make life so good. Things like baking peanut butter cookies, tying shoes, and embracing a future with purpose and hope that the best joy of life is yet to come.