Training Wheels for Motherhood

Going through motherhood at this stage is a big test for me. In particular, mothering a tall, dark and handsome 19 year old son into adulthood before I'm gray or bald. Or both.


You think when the babies are older, life will be so much easier. No diapers, no 2 a.m. feedings, no wondering what's wrong with them because they can tell you. You feel like your schedule will forever be tied to naptime. If only you could have some alone time. Or more time with your husband. Or with friends, uninterrupted.

Then, before you know it, you've passed through the stages of diapers, potty training, shoe-tying, and carpools. You've driven to their practices, cheered them through T-ball, soccer, baseball, and lacrosse; given up Saturdays at home to watch them score home runs. You knew all their friends, their friends' moms, and maybe even what was going in on their friends' moms' lives because you chatted with them on the sidelines long before anyone heard of email, let alone used it to the exclusion of live interaction.





You held your boy in your lap and read him books. You played wiffle ball in the backyard together, and caught fireflies on dark summer nights. He'd fall down a gravel driveway. You'd brush off the gravel, clean it up, and put a Band-aid on his boo-boo. You told him he was gonna be okay. He hugged you and said, "Thanks, Mom. "

He believed everything you said, and let you hold him during thunderstorms.

Even when Dad took the training wheels off his bike, you held the back of his bicycle seat in a death grip. While he pedaled and wobbled and finally took off on his own, you couldn't quite picture the day when you'd have to let go of him again and again, trusting that God never loses His grip on His children. He may extend a very, very long arm on the back of the bike seat, but He never lets go. He doesn't grow weary; He is always patient and kind.



Then the day comes when he is not riding the little blue bike you found on clearance at Wal-mart, but he's making payments for a jet black sports car that takes off every morning with supersonic speed. Sunroof open. Music blaring.

Instead of chocolate milk, he stirs up a protein shake for breakfast. Thankfully not at 2 a.m. He buys his own formula and, like a little boy, still wants to show you his muscles, except he's coy about it, coming shirtless to the dinner table.

He doesn't ask for lunch. He buys it at Wawa, and then says after two weeks he's gotta start taking his own lunch, saving money, feeling healthier.

You don't hold him during a thunderstorm; your relationship has become one.

The pantry contents go from zero to sixty after one grocery pitstop, yet "there's never anything good to eat around here." You are sorely tempted to buy the plaque that says "Bed and Breakfast: Make Your Own," but have this distinct feeling that such sentiments wouldn't reflect the servant attitude you know model all the time. Ahem.

I trust--I have to trust or I'd totally fall apart--that He who hung the stars in place and calms the angry sea and shuts the mouths of lions and opens the womb of barren women can and will bring me (us) through this test. For right now, God is keeping the training wheels on my bike, because He knows I'm still pedaling and wobbling down the sidewalk of motherhood. Good thing He's got a very, very long arm. Maybe when I learn to ride a real bike (as in when my kindergartener is almost 20), maybe then I won't fall so many times?