Let’s pull together

As my youngest child was promoted from eighth grade to a freshman in high school, I was reminded once again that life is a perpetual motion. We live, we move, we strive every day, each person moving in one direction or another.  Take for example this week we had a wedding and a graduation with each event signifying another step into their future.  

I thought about my role as a parent and the responsibility that I have to train my child in the way that she should go.  It starts early when you nurture your newborn child.  Then come the school years, a period of learning and the training and supervision that come with that; then continuing the course of their independence as young adults. 

Each generation is striving to achieve a life that they can call their own.  I thought about how we start by pulling like a parent pulling the young child in a wagon because that child hasn’t yet learned to walk. And then we push them forward as they begin to take their first steps, encouraging them along the way, though they fall we encourage them to stand and move ahead.  Then we have a season when we play tug-of-war, when the child is striving to be independent but has not yet mastered the skill. We each pulling our way to see who wins though it is not a game that we are playing for fun, but rather the game of life; we struggle to let go and  hold on.  Surrendering bit by bit as they force their way into maturity, we let go some more, they grow-up and move on.  

Life is a perpetual motion.  Though we may strive to pull or push; lets pull together to encourage each generation to move ahead and achieve greatness that resides in each and every one to come.