Doesn't seem all that long ago, that this beautiful young woman was a baby in my arms, now suddenly, she's looking at colleges, thinking about her future and we are moving towards a new phase in our lives! The past two Saturdays we've been on campus visits and it has me thinking about how those decisions affect the rest of our lives. As a parent, it's hard to let them make such life changing decisions, while you stand by on the sidelines, but we are learning each day that the decisions she makes are rooted in what she's learned growing up and learning to trust her is a whole new phase of parenting. After a college visit yesterday, I took Mark, Ross, and Tess rock climbing and thought about how climbing that wall is a lot like where Jill is in her life. We still want to be the harness but instead, we are the belayer. We hold the rope to catch her when she falls but she is the one charting her course, finding the footholds, and aiming for the top. There are moments when she will still sit back in the harness and let us hold her. There are moments when she may listen as we tell her to put her foot on the red foothold, but there are also moments when she will be able to see a better path from her viewpoint than we can from the ground looking up. It's a whole new kind of faith and trust that a parent begins to experience, but just like the rock climbing we did yesterday, it's an experience I don't want to miss.
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