The end of the beginning

September 1996.  My first little boy starts kindergarten.  His younger brother is in preschool; a third brother is on the way.

So begins an era of carpools and sack lunches and homework and tests and projects and papers and field trips and schedules and all the other things that go into what we call "School Days."

I am an eager mom, excited to see how my boys will grow and develop.

With three boys, School Days stretch out into weeks and months and years and years and years.

And then, one by one, those three boys finish their School Days.

Until finally the last lunch is packed, the last project is turned in, the last paper is written, the last test is taken.

When I think the progression of all these days, one after another, September 1996 through May 2015, it seems like a long time.  Nineteen years of preparatory education, all in a row.  That's a lot of sack lunches.

But when I think about the total of these days, the nineteen years they melted into, it doesn't seem like a long time at all.  It just seems like a special time.  A wonderful time.  A time that surely isn't over, is it?  Is it??



And I am comforted to know that this isn't the end.  It isn't even the beginning of the end.  But to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, it is the end of the beginning.

I am still an eager mom, excited to see how my boys will grow and develop.

And I am so grateful.

Dear God, I thank you for the privilege of being here for the beginning of the lives of these men.