The new normal

Aidan is at college.

We moved him into his dorm last Saturday -- which was actually a bit fun. Met his roommate (nice kid, quiet, a bit OCD, as evidenced by the fact that he had his shirts hanging in the closet organized in rainbow order, i.e. Red, Orange, Yellow, etc.). We took the roomie to dinner at an Ethiopian place, which he was game for, but he ended up not eating much. Wasn't sure we got off on the right foot, but I think it turned out okay.

Sunday was pretty tough for me. Aidan took off for the dorm about 3pm, and of course I was too choked up to say much. Bjorn told him we were proud of him and knew he was going to do well, then off he went. And off I went to the bedroom where I cried for a little while, then slept for about 2 hours!

So ... the week has been weird. We definitely miss Aidan a LOT. I did okay on Monday until evening (the time he's normally home), then had a bit of a cry. Woke up Tuesday morning in a VERY bad mood, missing Aidan, feeling acutely the shift in my identity from being the 24/7 Mom to being the long-distance Mom. I was so depressed, and just decided I was going to give in and let myself be a Depressed Empty Nester, but God had other plans.

I opened my Jesus Calling devotional book for the day, and this is what it said:

Entrust your loved ones to Me; release them into My protective care. They are much safer with Me than in your clinging hands. If you let a loved one become an idol in your heart, you endanger that one -- as well as yourself ... When you release loved ones to Me, you are free to cling to My hand. As you entrust others into My care, I am free to shower blessings on them. My Presence will go with them wherever they go, and I will give them rest. This same Presence stays with you, as you relax and place your trust in Me. Watch to see what I will do.

Well, then! I guess God knew I was going to need that exact devotional on that exact day and had the author write it and assign it to that day for me! It really helped. I definitely still miss Aidan, and sometimes I think, "Okay, the experiment is over, it's time for him to come home now." But even with the sadness and the sort-of grief that he's not right there in his armchair on his computer at the end of the day every day when I want him there, I know this is how things are supposed to be right now. It's a freaking tough adjustment, but God is walking with me (and with Aidan, and with Bjorn) and showing us all the way.

It's been an interesting week for Aidan, too. His first day of classes was yesterday, and his second class started with the professor walking in and saying, "This class is going to teach you to question everything you've ever learned." And one of the first two readings they were supposed to "question" was from the Bible. Aidan was really annoyed by it. I'm not doing it justice in this writing, but it sounded like the professor was definitely anti-Christian. So Aidan decided to drop that class and take a different one. I know he would have been okay in there, he would have probably been able to stand up for his beliefs, etc., but it's much better to not have to deal with a situation like that if it's possible to find an alternative. Since the specific class wasn't required (it was an "undergraduate studies" course -- he has to take a certain amount of those, but the specific ones he takes are up to him), then he felt it was better to just find something else he wouldn't mind as much. I'm very proud of him for making that decision and taking that initiative on his own!

I think it's going to take me a long time to adjust to what the Empty Nest means for me, as I mentioned above. That whole "long-distance mom" thing means my identity is no longer as strongly rooted in the "mom thing" as it used to be, and that's difficult for me. I don't know what's next for me, so I'm in a sort-of holding pattern while I wait for God to show me where I go from here. Obviously I'm still here for Aidan when he needs me, but it's a different kind of "here" than it used to be, so there's a lot of space to fill now, as it were.

Anyway, I don't think I'm doing such a great job of telling all this, but it's oddly very difficult for me to write about it! It's soooo deep and also pretty emotional in many ways, and that's why I haven't even attempted to write about it until today.

Well, Aidan will be home on Saturday, so it will be interesting to see what our interactions will be like now that he's had a little "freedom."

Can't wait to see him!

T-minus 22 hours and counting

Tomorrow is the day. "MD-Day" -- Move to Dorm Day. And then Sunday is "D-DAY" -- "Dorm Day". The difference is that Aidan will move in tomorrow afternoon, but come back home with us and spend the night and most of the day Sunday, then he will head off to stay on Sunday evening.

I have meant to write so much more as these days approached, but I've had a number of health things come up, and then it's just been darned hard to even think about anything to do with Aidan without tearing up and becoming all weepy.

I'm trying to comfort myself with the lovely, exquisite knowledge that UT is only 45 minutes from home, that he can come home any time he wants to, that at least for awhile he'll be home most weekends (unless he comes up with some kind of extracurricular interest that meets on Saturdays, in which case there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth on my part). I know we are truly blessed in that sense, that there are so many parents whose kids are going off to different towns, different states to college. I am SO grateful we're not heading to Chicago! If we were, I think at this stage I would be looking for an apartment there, because that is just too darned freaking far away.

But I like having Aidan HOME. I like that his room is just a few steps down the hall from ours. I like waking up in the middle of the night and knowing he is safely tucked in his bed just those few steps away. I like coming in from shopping and having him ensconced in "his" armchair in the living room, laptop on his knees, bopping away to some Japanese pop song in his earbuds. I like hearing, "Mom, when is supper?" and "I'm ready for bed now," (the latter to let us know it's time to go up and pray with him before he goes to sleep). I like hearing his laughter erupt into a quiet room as some webcomic tickles his funnybone, and I love it when he wants to share that comic with me.

I love when he wants to show me his favorite anime series, when he wants me to connect with something that is important to him.

I love the way his smile lights up the room, how just hearing his voice can chase away the demons of depression that sometimes swirl around me, especially when I'm feeling physically unwell.

But it's time to let go. It's time to lengthen the silver cord that connects my heart with his and let him go out into the world as he is supposed to do. It's time to let him begin to fulfill whatever plan it is God has for him. Going to UT is the first step in that plan, and I will not stand in God's way no matter how much I want to throw my arms around Aidan and hold onto him with all my might, keeping him here with me.

God has blessed us with an amazing young man, a young man who loves Him, who cares about pleasing Him, a young man who has so much promise and potential and so, so much to give to the world. We have brought him to this point with God's grace and His wisdom, and now it's time to launch him out into the waters of life, into the great plan God has for him, and trust that God will keep him safe and honor all that we've poured into him.

Will I cry? You betcha I will! I already have, copious amounts, and there will be copious more to come. But it's time. My heart and my soul and my head tell me so. And so I must let him go.

Come Monday morning I may actually breathe a sigh of relief -- not because I'm glad Aidan's gone (Lord knows that would never be true!), or because he's off doing what he's supposed to be doing. But this has been a L-O-N-G couple of years since he became a junior in high school and it hit me in the face that he would be leaving home soon. A long couple of years spent dreading the day he would move into his dorm at whatever university he ended up being led to. I've cried a lot of "anticipating" tears in these last two years, and I've stubbornly dug my heels in against the rush of time as the day grew nearer and nearer, trying to slow things down, to appreciate every moment while all three of us living in this house was still the normal way of things. For the last two years I wouldn't let myself say, "I can't wait for summer (or winter, or whatever) to be over," because when summer or whatever was over, D-day would be that much closer. Come Monday I can finally say, "I can't wait for Autumn!" without stopping myself and saying, "Wait, no, then THAT DAY will be closer!"

It's a small consolation, but I'll take it.

And, anyway, Jesus has been very gracious to me with His grace, and I know that He will continue to grant me exactly the grace I need to get through each and every day as an Empty Nester. I have a window decal on my car now that has a little UT longhorn on it and the words "Texas Parents," (as we are official members of the Texas Parents Organization.) It makes me feel proud to know that we're the parents of an amazing and wonderful college guy, a Texas Longhorn. We've outgrown high school and we've moved on.

I hope any of this post made any sense. It's hard to write from a heart that's overflowing with all kinds of emotions and have it come out the least bit intelligible.

I'll write again after D-Day and let you know how it went ...