Happy tears is how some people describe the tears that flow unbidden when facing a great change in life -- graduations, weddings, births.
Graduations were celebrated this past weekend in Pea Ridge and several other communities in the area. It's funny how the very thing for which we've aimed can seem anticlimactic if there is not another goal on the other side.
The graduates celebrate their supposed freedom -- freedom from rules, from school, even, they think, from parents.
The middle-aged adults celebrate having relatively successfully reared their children from infancy to adulthood.
The older adults just smile, knowing this is not the end, but merely the beginning.
Tears flow from mamas who wonder where the 18 years have gone as they recall holding that now-6-foot-tall young man when he was a new babe. I once heard it said that parenting is the only job you work yourself out of if you do a good job. How ironic is that?
But, truly, you're never finished. Although you may no longer be telling them what to do, or funding their lifestyle, or washing their clothes, you will always be concerned about them, seeking and praying for their best, willing to give advice whenever it's solicited (and trying to hold it back when it's not). Parenting is a lifetime project, though the face of it changes.
As the Pea Ridge High School seniors walked the halls of the Primary, Intermediate and Middle schools Friday to the applause of the young students, teachers -- who had them in their classrooms 12 years ago -- teared up, remembering the shy little boys and girls on their first days in kindergarten and first grade. The young children looked up to them, gave them high fives and remarked that they must really be grown up if they had facial hair. Two mothers, both school employees, hugged and cried as they realized their lives were changing, too, as their babies have grown up.
About a dozen years ago, I drove my first two daughters (now 30 and 31) to college about 100 miles away from our home. Because they had been educated at home, I had not left them for any length of time. My life had revolved around the children, our family, our home and our church. I found my identity in that. It's hard not to when it's so all-consuming. I remember crying all the way home and most of the weekend. I really can't say why, just that I knew a major change was happening and I was going to miss them.
Now, I realize our identity is not found in others, in our jobs, skills, homes, possessions -- it's found in who our Creator designed us to be. Everything else is a blessing, lagniappe, to be enjoyed for a season, but not held onto too tightly.
After a few more years, there were two weddings within six months of each other. Later, more weddings, births of grandbabies, moves, graduations, celebrations. Changes are constant. Only one thing doesn't change -- God's love for us.
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8 (NIV)
"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17 (NIV)
Celebrate graduation, truly commencement -- a going forth to the next season of life. Weep, if necessary, but rejoice at the future and embrace the change.
As Scripture says of the virtuous (strong) woman: "Strength and dignity are her clothing and she smiles at the future." Prov. 31:25.
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Editor's note: Annette Beard is the managing editor of The Times of Northeast Benton County, chosen the best small weekly newspaper in Arkansas for five of the past six years. A native of Louisiana, she moved to northwest Arkansas in 1980 to work for The Benton County Daily Record. She has nine children, four sons-in-law, seven grandsons and two granddaughters -- with another grandchild due in December. The opinions expressed are those of the author. She can be reached at [email protected].
Editorial on 05/18/2016