27

Our surviving son turned 27 yesterday. This is our first time having a child who is 27. Twenty seven is significant. It is those few years before 30, you are past those tumultuous years of early 20’s, you relax a bit, it is a nice age.

I treasure his birthday, I will never take another birthday for granted. I do look fondly and sometimes longingly back on the early years, but this week I have reflected on the joys of having an adult child in our life.

They are funny. You are past all the silly stuff of having to act like a grown-up around them and can just be yourself.

They hold fascinating perspectives. They bring a freshness to old topics, like having an eye exam and the doctor asks “one or two, three or four, which is clearer?” their life experiences can bring a clarity to long held suppositions and accepted beliefs, sometimes they can shatter a belief. They constantly breathe out fresh life and challenge us to see with new eyes.

They are resourceful and quite capable. There is a quote from a movie that runs through my head, the father is speaking to the mother about their young son, Jonathan says “I know – we taught him well, he’s smarter than you, he’s tougher than me.” I don’t know about teaching them well, I am not sure I taught them anything. The older I get the more I realize the miracle that surviving the “growing-up” process is, it increases the wonder I feel when I hear that strong, confident voice on the other end of the phone. One day you realize that they are smarter than you and that they are tough, they continue to get back up after being knocked down. And you relax, you know that whatever challenge they are facing or sharing with you, they don’t need you to fix it, they are more than capable of being creative and persevering through to a resolution.

Our lives are graced with his presence. I don’t say blessed, the most over used word ever. Not all people and not always, but largely, people tend to toss the blessed word around far too easily, when good happens then they see it as being “blessed.”  That implies that the absence of  good or “blessing”  means you have screwed up or lost favor.  We live by grace and mercy. I see God’s mercy in our son’s face. I see the light of grace in those gray/green shadowed eyes, I see God’s story unfolding in his life that has precious little to do with what we did or didn’t do. He is a child of grace. I have learned to see God through his eyes and shed my long held perceptions of God.

The days are never long enough, the hours never enough that we spend with our children, there is always a hunger for more time. But they were and are enough. If there was one wish for my children to know, it is that they are and always have been enough.