Empty Nesting

Parenthood is this holy paradox: You hold on with everything you’ve got, even as you’re preparing to let go.

​By the time you are reading this, Kathleen and I will be heading home from dropping off our youngest son at college.

By now, we will have hugged him goodbye. Slipped him our last bit of advice. And watched him walk across a new campus into his new life. 

Sean is the last of our three to go, which means—for the first time—we’ve crossed into that strange new territory called the “empty nesters club.” I can’t imagine what it’ll be like to step into our house still carrying echoes of the family we made.

Their bedrooms that once rattled with music, laughter, and the occasional slammed door will sit unnervingly quiet. The bath towels and toothbrushes will stand in their place. Even though lower food bills will be a pleasing, we know that eating meals will be different. Seats will be empty. Our hearts will ache. Our eyes will sting. If I’m being honest, they already do. 

Parenthood is this holy paradox: you hold on with everything you’ve got, even as you’re preparing to let go.

But we’ve been preparing them for this moment all along: teaching, guiding, praying, and watching them grow into people who can walk into the world without us. I like to believe all three are not only ready to do this, but are able to do it on their own.  

There's an ancient Hebrew proverb that states, “Train up a child in the way they should go; even when they are old they will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). As my lovely wife will attest, we have done what we can. Now, all we can do is to trust that God carries them the rest of the way.

Parenting doesn’t end with an empty house. It shifts—into new rhythms, new hopes, new trust. The rhythms may look different now with fewer late-night lights left on, or less shoes piled by the back door.

But new rhythms will emerge—quiet mornings with coffee, long walks that don’t need to end to rush off for school pick up, and the rediscovery of who we are when the house isn’t quite so full.

The hopes shift too: from dreaming about who our children might become, to watching with wonder as those dreams begin to take shape in them.

​And trust deepens—not in our ability to protect them, but in God’s ability to accompany them, wherever the road may lead.

The poet Kahlil Gibran once wrote, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” 

We’ve drawn the bow as best we could. Now comes the holy ache of release.

And if there is a silver lining, it’s this: we don’t walk into this season alone. We walk with you, this community of love, who carry our stories, cry our tears, share our laughter, and remind us that every ending carries the seed of a beginning.

As the door to his dorm room closes, it opens up a whole new world—for him, and for us. And in both, God is already there, welcoming us all home.