mgpcpastor's blog

So, all it looks like is a vacant room. (In need of a good clean and coat of paint)
It represents the close of one season of life and the beginning of another.
Every change of season is accompanied by some loss or another.
New seasons cannot truly commence until our losses are acknowledged and our changed situation is accepted.
Our family life no longer has Kat’s daily presence, but her marriage also means our family life has expanded to include Ben.
We will see them often, but now they come as visitors to our home, just as we will go as visitors to theirs.
Margaret and I are now in a season of watching our children assert their own independence and grow in their own maturity. Their needs in their relationship with us are changing.
Every parent goes through a season where the needs of their children seem more than they can bear. Then comes a season where their calls upon you lessen and you find yourself feeling that something is missing.
More losses, more new seasons.
Our four remaining at home children now have four bedrooms to share between them.
This aspect of our new season seems to have very little immediate loss for them.
Perhaps like Margaret and me and lots of others, when first married a couple have a home with their own bedroom, and a study, and a hobby room. With the addition of a baby, either the study or the hobby room disappear, with the addition of more children, the other room goes. You carry out your study and hobbies in your bedroom.
Part of me knows that as we enter new seasons of life in the future that we’ll have more and more empty rooms to reclaim.
That will happen when our at home children are ready to enter their own future seasons.
We’ll accept those new seasons as they come.
But not yet.
All it looks like is a vacant room, but it represents a new season.