I’m OK, you’re OK…well we’re mostly OK (on springtime transitions)

This time of year is packed with ceremonies and performances. There are sacraments and graduations. There are end-of-year projects and exams. There are assignments that matter and assignments that don’t, and it’s hard to know which is which.

This season has been nicknamed “Maycember” for a reason. We the parents, in order to finish a far-from-perfect school year, are struggling to keep up with all the activity. We might just barely be hanging on. But we’re committed to making it to June, which might not be all that much less chaotic.

So, we hold on. Because the world is spinning and life is changing and our children are rapidly growing, and we’re just fortunate to be along for the ride.

Whether you’re someone who embraces change or resists it, I imagine you find this time of year makes you even more aware of how the young people in your world are changing. For me, it’s this time, more than any other, that highlights just how much they are growing up and away.

Maybe your child is finishing preschool or third grade or eighth grade or high school or college—or beyond. Wherever you are on this journey, the milestones of the spring often introduce you to one door closing and another opening.

I wouldn’t want to hold our children back. Or maybe I would, just a little bit, to keep them close a little longer, preserve what we have, and not enter this new chapter.

But it’s out of my hands. And I’m honored to be here to see them on the cusp of a new beginning. So, on we go.

I was thinking of that this weekend as the college where I work celebrated our Commencement—one of my favorite days of the year. It’s a beautiful day, and this year it’s full of emotions, especially as I look ahead to our oldest son’s high school graduation.

In the Church, we also marked the Ascension this weekend. And I thought of how the disciples might have wished that they could keep Jesus on earth, fully with them, rather than seeing him go up to heaven. That had to be so strange and disconcerting and maybe even scary.

You can believe that something is for the best, truly for a greater good, and still want to hold onto the way things are.

“While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, ‘Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?
This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven
will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.’”  (Acts 1:9-11)

Here I stand, looking at the sky, marveling at who my children are and where they’re heading next. I’m honored to have a front-row seat—or a seat all—in their lives. And so I hold onto that even as we prepare for this next big change.

And it’s not even “we” that are preparing. We are watching, marveling from an ever-greater distance, as this new era begins. So, here we go.

“Every mother is like Moses,” Pope Paul VI said. “She does not enter the promised land. She prepares a world she will not see.”

And so we keep pouring ourselves into our children, trying to prepare them for whatever comes next. We hold onto the belief that Jesus is still with us, even after the Ascension. And we try to remember that people who move on to new places and opportunities never really do leave us—and carry us with them wherever we go.

I believe that. I do. And I also want the next few weeks not to go by too quickly.

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