Letting Go

I knew this week was coming. I just didn’t realize how hard it would hit when it actually got here.

In the span of one week, my first son moved away to college and turned 18.

And as proud as I am of him, there’s a part of this dad that doesn’t like it one bit.

For 17 birthdays, he was here. I could walk into his room, hug him, tell him happy birthday face to face, aggravate him a little, and remind him how proud I am to be his dad.

This year, he’s in Cookeville.

I keep thinking back to the day he was born. I remember standing in the nursery absolutely petrified. I had no clue how to raise a child. None. They were about to send this little boy home with me, and somehow I was supposed to know what to do.

He started crying, and I reached my hand down beside him. He wrapped that tiny hand around my finger, looked up at me, and stopped crying.

I’ll never forget it.

Something happened in me in that moment. I still didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew one thing for certain:

I was going to do everything I could to figure it out.

Eighteen years later, I can tell you I didn’t always figure it out.

Sometimes I got it right. Sometimes I got it completely wrong. There were times I was probably too hard and times I wasn’t hard enough. Times I knew exactly what he needed and plenty of times I was just doing the best I knew how to do.

But today I look at the young man he has become—a young man who loves Jesus, who has worked hard, accomplished more than we have shelves to hold the awards for, and made his mom and dad proud in more ways than he probably realizes—and I think maybe his mother and I got at least a few things right along the way.

But now comes a different season of parenting.

For 18 years, our job was largely to keep him close, teach him, protect him, correct him, encourage him, and prepare him.

Now part of our job is to let him go.

And that’s harder than I thought it would be.

My greatest prayer for him as he begins this new chapter isn’t that he wins more awards, makes the most money, gets the best grades, or becomes the most successful person in the room.

My prayer is that he remembers whose he is.

Yes, he is a Mull. He is my boy, and there will never be a day when that changes.

But before he is mine, he belongs to God.

So I pray that he’s goes out to be a light in Cookeville.

Loves Jesus when it’s easy and when it costs something. Stands on His Word when everybody around him stands somewhere else. Loves people. Serves people. Tells people about the Savior who changed his life. I pray he is the same young man when Mom and Dad aren’t watching that he has  been when we were.

The world doesn’t just need another successful young man.

It needs young men who belong to Jesus.

Happy 18th birthday, son.

I couldn’t be prouder of the man you are becoming. I’m excited to watch what God does with your life, even if I’m still learning how to handle watching it from a little farther away.

And just in case he gets to read this there is one final request from your dad…

Come home on the weekends every now and then.

We’ll cook for you. We can sit on the porch and talk about nothing or listen to music that only we like

Your mom will wash and fold your laundry.

And your dad will pretend that was the reason he wanted you to come home in the first place.