Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. – Khalil Gibran

Serendipity. One more visit with the Orlando grands as we play the part of roadside inn for the family on their way back to Florida.

This time it is the whole crew. Craig flew up to join Naomi and the children at the Jersey Shore along with his parents (Mimi and Pop-pop) and now they are driving south together.

They rolled into Tarboro mid-afternoon Wednesday, in time for what Naomi still calls “Daddy-burgers” because that’s what I told my kids they were back when they were growing up.

And today, if Naomi at least lets me know by lunchtime, I am still going to cook exactly what she wants for dinner – I am that much of a pushover: “Daddy-burgers and tater-tots, please.” Then when she came through nine days ago, “Please make my special spaghetti” and you know that I did.

Yes, the children all grew at least a couple of inches during the week at the shore, and our Golden Florida-boy Geoffrey absorbed a little more tan.

We will take them when we can get them.

I especially like the Khalil Gibran quote above because it gets to the heart of what makes this parenting gig is so wonderful, and challenging, and difficult and beautiful. Rebekah and I had a saying we used a lot when we taught the huge (mostly young parents) class in Pensacola. “Our responsibility is to love them and to raise them well-equipped to leave home.”

To love our children and to raise them well-equipped to leave home

They really are “the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.” And the fact is that it is their journey, not ours – hard as it is sometimes to watch them make their own decisions, and mistakes, and successes, and so much more along the way.

Of course, we know without any doubt that they will best engage the longings and the life when they also acknowledge that they belong to God even more than they belong to life.

So, yes, we never fully let them go. And they don’t let us go either – DEREK

First photo: sleepy-eyed hitting the road early today. Last photo: with the other grandparents this week on the Jersey Shore