While reading Genesis 1-2 yesterday morning, I got to thinking about Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” It had never occurred to me before that this is before the fall, before sin entered the world. Which is significant. This means that this concept of a man leaving his father and mother and joining his wife is inherently good, good by design, which also means, if we think this through, that the so-called “empty nest” is a good and proper and expected thing, good and designed to be the way families work before the fall. It means that this is something that is in how our Creator has designed us and our relationships with each other. The thing is, though, that the fall and our now sin nature taints everything. We tend to take something beautiful and good and right and forget how to live in it as good and beautiful and right.
My husband and I are entering the phase of life where we are
about to be empty-nesters, with one son having gotten married last May, one son
who, having become recently engaged and will, Lord willing, most likely be
married before the end of this year, and our youngest daughter about to
graduate high school and, again, Lord willing, planning to leave for college in
the Fall. As I meditate on this biblical
thought here at the beginning of a new year and at the cusp of our new season
of life, I want to think and behave righteously. Also, as I meditate on this, I find myself
thinking about it from a different angle than I did as a newly wed just
starting out and learning how to start our new family together. Now I’m
thinking about it, not from the standpoint of the one leaving, but of the one
being left.
How often do we see the “empty nest” concept as a negative
thing, as something to mourn and complain about, among our friends and on our
social media and in our entertainment?
In our fallenness, we
are prone to a self-centered, selfish way of viewing life, and we often don’t
even realize it. I know for a fact, as I sit here at the beginning of this
season of life, that I did not consider my parents and in-laws enough in how
they might be experiencing our leaving and cleaving. I think, through the years, we have had a
pretty good relationship with our respective parents, and I am very grateful
for that. But there can sometimes be a tendency as we spread our wings to see
our parents more as adversaries as we break free rather than as allies to help
us fly. It can be especially hard for the in-law relationship if we, as young
people, forget that these people loved and raised our spouse, have sought the
best interests of our spouse, loved them as a tiny baby and loved them as they
grew to adulthood, and love them still now that they are leaving the nest to go
start their own nest.
On the other hand, we parents can have just as much of a
tendency to be self-centered and selfish, because we, too, are sinners. Again, how
many times have you known people in real life and in our movies and TV shows
who cling too hard to their grown children or who meddle too much or make
demands/expectations or offer too much unsolicited/unwelcome comments or who
just make it difficult for adult children to leave their parents and cleave to
their spouses? There is a reason the meddling, difficult in-law joke is a common trope.
What I’m getting at is that as we navigate different life
seasons, we would do well to remember that this notion of children growing up
and leaving father and mother to form their own home and family is not an evil,
not a thing to mourn, but to embrace, celebrate, and handle wisely. It is good.
But as we remember this, we also need to remember that in our sinfulness, we
can ruin that good thing if we do not have the right attitude about it and
forget that all good things are meant to glorify our God and help us to enjoy
Him in this life.
While pondering these things, I also read Proverbs 1
yesterday, where I came across verse 8-9, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction
and do not forsake your mother’s teaching; indeed, they are a graceful wreath
to your head and ornaments about your neck.” So, I got to thinking about this
in light of the Genesis 2:24 verse, that leaving and cleaving doesn’t mean
forgetting all that came before. Our parents loved us, taught us, raised us,
and, hopefully, if done well, we still want them to be part of our lives. They don’t
stop loving us and wanting what’s best for us when we grow up and leave the
nest. The training and instruction they instilled in us during our growing up doesn’t
lose its importance when we leave their home. But the relationship does
change. Hopefully, if we are both wanting to seek God and honor Him, we can
move from having the authority relationship of parent to child to having more
of a friendship of parent to adult child.
So, as I follow the encouragement my pastor gave us on Sunday
to meditate on God’s Word, and as I enter this season of parent to adult
children, having once been that young adult child and now the parent of young
adult children, here are a few thoughts I would like to consider, for the young
just starting out and for me, the older person wanting to honor the Lord and
love my sons and daughter well (and the new daughters who love my sons and the,
hopefully one day, young man, who will love my daughter) as they learn to spread their
wings.
As a young person, try really hard not to start out viewing
your parents and in-laws as adversaries who you need to immediately set up
boundaries against. Try seeing them as
allies who love your spouse and want very much to love you. We parents will
make mistakes. We won’t want to, but we will. Please be patient with us as we
seek to be patient with you. Please choose to assume the very best motives you can, rather than assuming bad motives. How you choose to see your parents and in-laws will
very much color how you are able to hear, see, interact, and love them. This is
something I wish I had understood better when I was young.
As a parent, God helping me and looking to Jesus, my Savior, and trusting the Holy Spirit as He conforms me to the image of Christ, I intend to choose to treat my children and
their spouses as allies, not adversaries, and to try very hard not to give them
reason to feel we are adversaries rather than allies. Again, how we assume motives goes a long way to how we then interact with each other. I must always put the best construction on comments and actions that I possibly can, assume the best and choose never to hold a grudge. Our family is not shrinking
because our kids are flying from the nest, it is expanding. We get to love new
people who, though different, are very, very special and worth knowing well. I
intend to see the empty nest, not as a time to grieve what was when the kids
were little and life was very busy with all their activities, but as a new
season in which to find new interests and new traditions and new places and
people in which to serve God’s Kingdom. I
intend to encourage my kids in positive ways, and to try very hard not to put undue
expectations or burdens on them. Of course I hope in the years to come that they
will want to spend time with us, so I am praying often that I will invest
in being the kind of person they will want to spend time with. I don’t want to
hinder that for them or make it difficult to love us, and I also very much want
them to be free to start their lives together, with our blessing, not our
complaining.
May we seek to honor God in how we love each other. May we
be loving, forgiving, full of grace and understanding as we navigate new
seasons of life together, because we have been forgiven so much by our loving Savior, Jesus Christ.
