It happened again. I had to have one of those hard conversations with my daughter. Those conversations where things have to be spoken and talked about and called out even though I know I often will also have to play the Mom card. The card where I say, “well, it is in my Mom contract that I have to do this.”
She’s leaving for college in just a few weeks, so it turns out I am finding lots of hard conversations that I feel the need to have – even though I have probably had more than a few of them already. To her credit she receives these with quite a bit of grace and patience.
But I am angry and scared about this particular conversation. Even having to have it is just wrong.
We had a conversation about what to do if you are in a theater filled with tear gas and an active shooter. About how to keep your head when all those around you are losing theirs and how to get out alive. Or at least try to get out alive.
Now why should any parent have to have a conversation like that? The obvious answer is “because there are crazies out there”. The soulless and the tormented souls who dine on fear and anger and hate. They seem to be proliferating like a really bad B-grade zombie movie.
Now how can I send her off into that world? It is hard, I’m not gonna lie. But our God – the one we both follow and love – is bigger than all of this. And while it is really hard sometimes to leave things in His hands and trust that He has a plan for her, a plan to prosper her as promised in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah, that is not only the sole option it is the best option.
So, Lord, here she goes. Please take as good of care of her outside our home as You have when she was inside. And keep the crazies from her.
Just Sayin' 