WHEN THEY LEAVE THE NEST

I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love.  Death can’t, and life can’t.  The angels can’t, and the demons can’t.  Our fears for today, or worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away.  Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.    Romans 8:38-39

I think I will start campaigning that parents of teenagers attend a mandatory class (maybe even get a degree) to prepare us to respond when sons and daughters leave the nest and embark on life after High School.   I convince myself that I am good at this.  I can give him all the freedom he needs.  While attempting to hand him this freedom, I do admittedly have some mantras that I repeat to him continually.  I sound like a broken record.  “Please be careful….Drive slowly….Don’t take chances….Walk with someone else in the city….Call me when you get there……Wear your seatbelt……etc….etc…..”   In a perfect world, the whole ‘letting them go’ thing makes perfect sense. In reality, however, it feels like cutting the apron strings over a pool of sharks.

Last month I received a disturbing call from one of my son’s friends.  He began like this, “Mrs. Shelly, We’ve had a mishap.”  As my heart climbed out of my chest and into my throat, he went on to explain that they had been 4-wheeling.   My traveling heart at that point enlarged and began to occlude any effective airflow.  Assuming that my son was not the caller because he could no longer speak, I waited for the other shoe to drop.  Alex calmly explained that my son’s friend Brad was driving too fast, flipped his 4-wheeler, and……injured his arm.  The pounding in my head grew louder as I stood there, suspended in time with the phone to my ear waiting for Alex to tell me that my son was unspeakably damaged under the wreck.  The other shoe didn’t drop.  I gathered my courage and asked him if Isaac was okay.  “Sure, he just wanted me to call you to say he’d be late because we’re going to stop by the ER with Brad.”  I’m not sure whether relief or agitation was the dominant emotion at that moment, but I managed to ask, “Why didn’t Isaac call me HIMSELF?”  Alex logically explained that Isaac’s hands were muddy as he was hosing off the 4-wheelers and he didn’t want to get the phone dirty.  I determined that I may have to kill him myself.   I suppose I should be grateful that my son reports when he will arrive home late, it was just the delivery of the message with which I struggled.   I attempted a rational explanation later that night.  I told my son, in no uncertain terms, that he should NEVER let a friend call me with frightening information again, as my motherly composure is easily disrupted when I think he’s DEAD.

Fast forward to this weekend.  Jim and I decided we needed a get-away weekend for our birthdays.  We traveled to Cape May and leaving the chaos of our lives behind, we arrived late at a restaurant for dinner.  My cell phone rang.  “Mrs. Shelly, this is Brian.”  I could barely hear him.  Brian is my son’s good friend at his inner city university.  My blood pressure began to rise as I started walking out toward the restaurant entrance to take the call.  He continued, “It’s okay, but I need to tell you that Isaac got mugged.”  Trying to ignore the bells and whistles of adrenalin rush and panic in my head, I stood there numbly listening to the details.  All the while, I imagined the worst- why else would Isaac let his friend call me?  When Ryan started talking again, I lost feeling in my feet and my ankles turned to rubber so I sat down.  Apparently, Isaac had walked to the train station to await his friend’s train.  He was alone when he noticed two thugs coming up behind him.  One of them wielded a gun.  My son was intelligent enough to start removing the wallet from his pocket immediately, and probably all but threw it at them.  He told them he didn’t want any trouble and after they patted him down for additional goods, they told him he’d better get out of there.  He wisely did.  He met the train and then went immediately to the police station.  The Philadelphia police drove him around in the back of a squad car so he could look at the people on the street and see if he spotted the thieves.  Next he had to spend some time pouring over mug shots at the police station.  Not surprisingly, he couldn’t clearly identify any faces.  It seems that once his eyes were riveted to the gun in the robber’s hand, his otherwise sharp assessment skills were effectively blurred.  He is $50.00 lighter and has to apply for another MAC card and driver’s license, but does not seem obviously distraught over this episode. 

Not counting the initial shock of the phone call, the most difficult time for me came in the nearly 90 minutes we waited for Isaac to finish with the police and call us.  Should we go to Philadelphia?  Where would we go and what would we do when we got there?  Is he really okay?  Is he just putting on a brave face for his friend?  It was excruciating feeling so helpless.  Jim kept reminding me that this is the kind of life learning that teaches a person how to responsibly function on their own.  Sure, leave it to my husband to be completely rational while I’m busy panicking.  It is hard for me to keep those annoying growth opportunities in perspective when we’re talking about the little boy who needed me to remind him of his homework just a few years ago.  Jim called Brian again while we waited, and we felt a little better when he reported having just received a photo from Isaac’s phone.  The image was of Isaac and his friend making faces in the back of a police cruiser….. 

I am so very thankful that there were no sutures or ambulance rides involved.  When Isaac finally phoned, my nervous resolve completely dissolved into a puddle of sobs upon hearing his voice.  “I’m fine Mom.  Don’t cut your weekend short to come up here, I’m fine….”  When I finally managed to stop sobbing and let a few words escape from my mouth, I said, “You’re transferring to BLUFFTON!”   We had visited that tiny town when we were ‘college shopping.’   By the conclusion of our visit and despite my conviction to the contrary - Isaac had determined that he would perish from monotony within the first semester were we to leave him there so far from city access. 

At any rate, he did not seem to appreciate the wisdom of my transfer suggestion.  He did admit that he probably should have been waiting for the train with the crowd of people at the other end of the station, so maybe something was accomplished along with the new gray hairs I feel emerging from my scalp.    I highly recommend the distribution of a broad parachute of prayer as children jump from the protected home nest into the rest of their lives.  I know we’ve changed the prayer terminology at the Shelly house from “hedges of protection” to “big stinking WALLS.”