What to do with big feelings

He is the one who came fast … and two weeks early! I pushed twice, and he was in my arms. I cried the night before we took him home because I had no idea how I was going to be the mom to two children age two and under. His name means “tenacious like a dog,” and he is! We have always had a close and open relationship. He asked me things that young boys should probably ask their fathers … but I put on my calm face and answered honestly and openly. He waited until the last minute to do everything! That totem pole in 6th grade still haunts me. He has lived abroad, cooked for himself, made decisions, and experienced both success and disappointment.

One day, he became a man when I wasn’t looking, and I still can’t quite get over it. He is rock solid, the one to count on in an emergency, and passes out at the sight of his own blood. Sometimes, when I think he is laughing, I look closer, and he is actually sobbing. He is a part of my heart that lives outside my body.

Last week, I helped him move to California for his first full-time career job. We packed. We moved boxes. We put gas in the car. We put more gas in the car. Our conversation was easy and joy-filled. I tried not to tell him what to do … and was mostly successful. We saw beautiful scenery, ate good food, laughed a lot, and wondered what the future would look like. It was precious time that I do not take for granted and tried to tuck away in my memory so I can pull it out and enjoy on hard days.

I am learning to think in a new time zone…

There is something about being a mother that quietly prepares you for ministry… or maybe it’s the other way around.

Because no one really tells you what to do with these big feelings.

Not when you are holding a newborn and wondering how your heart could possibly stretch any wider.
Not when you are answering questions you never expected to answer, trying to be steady and honest and good.

Not when you watch them become who they are, slowly, and then all at once.

And not when you let them go.

Ministry, especially as a woman, asks for that same kind of love.

It asks you to hold people close without holding them back.

To nurture, to guide, to answer questions you weren’t prepared for.

To show up with calm and courage, even when you feel like you are figuring it out as you go.

To celebrate who people are becoming, even when it means they are moving beyond you.

And then, somehow, to bless the leaving.

There is no roadmap for this kind of love. No seminary class on what to do with a heart that lives outside your body, whether that heart belongs to your child or to the people you serve.

But maybe this is the work.
To love deeply.
To release faithfully.
To trust that what you have poured in, over years of presence and patience and grace, will carry them further than you can go.
And to believe that God holds them… even when you cannot.

Because nobody ever tells us what to do with these big feelings.
But maybe, just maybe, they are the very place where our calling lives.

All love,
Leslie