What’s a Mother to Do When Her Kids Are Grown?

“It’s as though I’m facing a forced retirement,” I whispered with a tear-choked voice to my husband while attempting to explain my dilemma—a dilemma I admittedly should have been better prepared to handle. I had known it was coming decades in advance. Naively, I expected to grow into the next phase of life gracefully, with wisdom and a sense of readiness. I didn’t.

As time went on and the tint of my rose-colored glasses slowly faded into the clear view of stark reality, I allowed my expectations to fall. I tried rationalizing the thought that it was inconsequential whether or not I knew my place in the next phase of life. I decided that if I couldn’t manage to naturally mature into a new role, at the very least, I would have a plan. Well, here I was, about to see my oldest marry and my youngest graduate, still lacking a plan. I felt stuck, like I was grieving a profound loss and grasping blindly for hope.

I needed to understand why this transition was so difficult. Perhaps if I found the root, I could handle it appropriately. I began observing the timeline of my career as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. Since the early days of my first pregnancy, whenever I was overwhelmed by a situation, I was able to find the strength to face the task at hand by leaning into a combination of a foundational purpose combined with goals of eternal value. I had always wanted to be a mother and homemaker. I felt deeply about the importance of this role in society. I was passionate about it. It seemed as though I was born for the mission of children, home, and family.

It was much more difficult than I had foreseen, but no less beautiful. Knowing I could not pursue something of greater importance than this kept me heavily invested in the path of full-time child-rearing, homeschooling, and homemaking. My dilemma was, besides full-time motherhood, what could I possibly do that contained more value with an equal potential for greatness? This realization fell heavily on me.

My kids were done. There was no more time to improve my parenting skills. No more time to repair mistakes. No more time to invest in the individual strategies that had taken so long to develop for each child. I struggled against the notion that, for the rest of my life, I would not be able to do anything of greater value than I had already done. It seemed I was literally in a situation where it was all downhill from here.

Though I tried logically telling myself that these thoughts were entirely overdramatic, the dark, unrelenting feeling of purposelessness invaded my soul. The combination of purpose plus goals was no longer applicable. From my vantage point, that foundational purpose had come to a gorgeous yet devastating maturity and all future goals had now been given over to the care of those I had raised. The most difficult part for me to reconcile was that these were wonderfully good things!

My children had been raised to adulthood and all relationships between us were healthy and enjoyable. They were taking over their own lives without having to rebel or push away their parents. We had raised mature, kind, creative, responsible kids who we actually really liked! I felt guilty for experiencing such sorrow. It seemed purely selfish. Try as I might, I was powerless to stamp it out. What now? How could anything hold a candle to what had been?

Then, one cold Sunday morning as I chose to worship through my heartache, God poked a hole in the thick blanket of grief that I had been struggling to free myself from. His light shone in just enough to illuminate one truth and burn it into my heart and mind. He had, with much delight, created my first calling. He had shown me the beauty and brilliance of that calling. In fact, the reason motherhood had any importance at all was because He created it that way. It became abundantly clear that my magnificent God who had bestowed upon me the gift, responsibility, and calling of full-time motherhood was just as capable of bestowing upon me a new purpose and a fresh calling. Not only was He capable, but it was His promise.

“Thank you,” I whispered to God with a tear-choked voice.

So now I wait. I still feel the grief of loss, but I am no longer fighting it. I am allowing it to take its course with the realization that there is great hope for the future if I accept His calling when it comes.