Savoring the sacredness of the in-between season

I'm not good with goodbyes.

When I dropped my daughter off at college during August of her freshman year, I thought my heart would never recover from the loss of her presence in my daily life. She lived in her college town year-round for 4.5 years due to her job and housing situation, only coming home for a week or so during breaks.

In December she graduated and moved back home. She has an internship that starts in Feb, and is waiting for a Peace Corps assignment where she will depart in July and be serving somewhere across the world for the next twenty seven months straight.

And right now I'm okay with that.

I've learned (and will continue to learn) how to release my grip and celebrate her wings--and entrust her life in God's hands. Because just like she has grown, I have grown too. She's learned how to survive in a world without me by her side, and I have learned to survive without her by mine.

But for right now...for the next six sacred months, my baby girl is under my roof.

I can smell her lotion when I walk down the hall. I can hear the gentle strums of her ukulele when I go to sleep at night. Her car is parked in the old spot in front of our house and her shoes are on the stairs. And when I walk by her room on my way to work in the morning, I can peek in and see her sleeping in her bed.

She is finally home.

We can schedule yoga classes together. We can take walks. We can argue about who drank the last of the almond milk and who stole the phone charger. We can binge-watch crappy reality TV and old episodes of Friends. We can experiment cooking new recipes we found on Pinterest while sipping her favorite wine instead of mine.  And we can just sit on the couch and reminisce about the past, and dream about the future.

But I've learned that the future comes too quickly anymore.

These will be sweet, precious days, and the fleetingness is not lost on me. This is probably the last time she will ever truly be home, and the last time she will ever truly be mine. But I am not going to count the days until she leaves, instead I'm going to make them count.

And I am going to savor this sacred, interim season with all of the presence, intention, and joy a mother's heart could possibly hold.

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Written by Kami Gilmour, author of a best-selling devotional book for parents of college students (Release My Grip), and mom of five teen and young adult kids (releasing her grip on her son at college drop-off day in the photo.)