Free as a weed
Couldn’t wait to get goin’
But wasn’t quite ready to leave.
“American Honey” by Lady Antebellum
Letter to my American Honey,
Let me tell you what I love the most about you. Since you could walk and talk, you were a force to be reckoned with. Your tenacity and passion has been a sense of pride for me since I caught the first glimmers of it in your early years. I won’t pretend that this quality in you did not cause some conflict over the years, but I love the strength of will that burns in your soul. You didn’t just live outside the box; you looked upon the box with disdain. If I offered you two options of anything, you always chose a third. Testing boundaries wasn’t just a stage for you; it was a personality trait.
As you have grown, this drive to be the author of your own destiny has taken you down paths that I wouldn’t have chosen for you. As a parent, letting go of my dream for you in deference to your dream for yourself has been hard. Perhaps there are times that this struggle of the wills has made you think that I do not love you or value you or respect you or appreciate you or have pride in you as my daughter. I do. I most certainly do. But my deep love for you sparks in me fears and worry. And sometimes that fear manifests itself as anger or frustration. I yearn to protect you, and sometimes what I’ve tried to protect you from was yourself. You would have none of it. And so, as you have matured, I have stepped back and let your learn to drive, both literally and figuratively. And I lie awake at night and wait for you to come home again, worrying all the while that you have had far more freedom than you could handle.
You have been in a hurry to grow up your entire life. Maybe it’s having older brothers or maybe it’s just how God made you. Your fearless push for independence has not been without it’s bumps and bruises, and there were many a night I wasn’t sure we would both arrive at this day. But here we are. You are officially the adult that you have willed yourself to be for years. And now that you are allowed to choose, allowed to decide, I hope you will choose us. Perhaps all this time the yearning “to be free” is because you “had to” stay, but now that you can choose anything, anywhere, I hope you’ll choose here. I hope you choose home.
When I say that I hope you will choose home, I do not mean that I don’t want you to ever move out and move on. I mean, I hope you will wait to launch out into the world until your feet are a little steadier. More than that, I hope that you will know that this is where your homeport is and you will come to call often. I hope that you will not think that independence means that you can’t come home for dinner or a movie night. I hope you won’t think that once you walk out, you can’t look back. I cannot tell you what your future will hold, but I can tell you that no matter how old you get, no matter where you go, as long as there is breath in me, I am going to be waiting for you to come home.
Happy Birthday!
Love,
Mom
There’s a wild, wild whisper
Blowin in the wind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzzr7RbzUTs
