Why does time have to move so fast?
It seems like just yesterday that I was dropping my now 17-year-old son off for pre-kindergarten. Now, he is preparing to embark on his last year of high school. How do I have a senior in high school? I’m not old enough to have a senior in high school! Are any of us ever really “old enough” to have a child about to hit major milestones? I think not. For those of you close enough to me, you may know that, in all reality, I have a 20-year-old as well. So, I guess I really am “old enough” to have a seventeen-year-old!
As I sit and prepare for my son’s first football game of his senior year, I think back to how it seems like yesterday each time a memory about him pops up on my Facebook page. I can remember the day he was born, and taking him to meet his grandparents for the first time, and him singing with the students at Mother’s Day Out programs. I remember him starting school, and playing third grade football. I remember the smile on his face when he caught a tipped ball in the endzone for a touchdown, and the pride that he has every time he puts on that Daingerfield Tiger uniform. It just all seems to have gone so fast.
In reality, time has gone no faster or slower for me than it has for anyone who has been in my position. We all have had 24 hours each day of our son or daughter’s senior year, just like we did during their kindergarten years. But, as we (and our kids) have gotten older, we have become busier and thus it has felt (and will feel) like time is flying by.
As I try to come to grips with the fact that my son is a senior, I have come to understand when those parents before warned that this would be hard. I have come to realize that growth is hard; it is uncomfortable. And who in their right mind will honestly say they enjoy “uncomfortable-ness?”
I have been hooked on a Netflix series called All-American, which shares the story of a high school football player and his family and friends and their successes and failures. Something said in one episode really struck me.
“You have to sit with the uncomfortable.” The character shared this with her friends during the midst of change. She shared that sometimes, we all must sit with the uncomfortable. We do not have to try and rush to fix everything.
So, to anyone going through changes, whether it is dealing with having a senior or dropping your baby off at college…here is a reminder. Sit with the uncomfortable. Don’t feel like you have to rush through the emotions of the changes you are encountering. If you are breathing, then you have survived 100 percent of the hard things you have dealt with in the past. And this will be no different. You will make it through the uncomfortable in due time, and more than likely you will find yourself better on the other side.
So, if you see me sitting in the stands at football games in tears, just now that I am taking my own advice and doing my best to sit with the uncomfortable. Don’t judge me, just pull up a seat, sit with me, and help me cheer my senior on.