233: Little Jolt of Joy: Embracing the Journey of Parenting

Prepare the Child for the Road, Not the Road for the Child

Every so often I want to share something that has nothing to do with decluttering, organizing, or planning for ADHD brains, just something sitting on my mind. Today, it’s a chapter closing.

Our youngest graduates on Monday, closing out two decades of K-12 education in our family. Our oldest is about to turn 25. We’re a little over a year away from ending the teen years in this house entirely.

Life measured in numbers versus life measured in moments

I could reduce all of this to statistics: 31 years married to my high school sweetheart, four kids in seven years, nine consecutive years of diapers, six schools across three states and two decades, roughly 9,360 packed lunches. It’s tempting to measure a life that way, but life isn’t quantitative. It’s qualitative.

What actually stays with you isn’t the count of anything. It’s the specific moments you work to freeze in your mind, because holding onto a memory in your own head feels more permanent than losing it somewhere inside 10,000 photos on a phone. A conversation in the car. A late-night cry over school stress. Eyes searching the bleachers until they find you. A hug, whether it was offered freely or grudgingly given when asked for. Dinners around the table whenever you could make them happen. The shared experiences on a big trip or a small one that bonded you in a way nothing else quite does.

If you’re in the hard part of a season right now

This too shall pass, and it passes faster than seems possible. There’s something worth holding onto in every phase, even the genuinely difficult ones, but the constant pace of ordinary life will drag you into the next phase before you’ve fully noticed the one you’re in. Try to catch the moments when you’re actually present enough to notice them. Hug them as many times as you can. You’ll miss that as much as anything else.

The philosophy that guided us

I don’t give parenting advice, this isn’t a parenting podcast, but if there’s one thing I’m grateful we held onto as these chapters close, it’s the idea of preparing the child for the road, not preparing the road for the child. That was never about teaching them every lesson off some mental checklist. It was about giving them enough confidence to know they will stumble, they will fall, and they are fully capable of getting back up, starting over scared, and changing direction when they need to. The road is never flawless for anyone. What matters is that they know you have their back when they need you, and that they trust themselves fully when they don’t have access to you.

A closing chapter, and an open one

There’s real sadness in closing a chapter, alongside real excitement for the one starting next. I haven’t read ahead on what an empty nest actually feels like. I do know the transition is less of a light switch than people let on, there’s a runway to it, not a sudden drop.

Wherever you are in your own journey right now, whatever phase you’re actually living in today, try to embrace it as it’s happening, not just the milestones on either side of it.

Continue to choose joy.