Category Archives: college

Crisis – I Lost My Phone!!

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Guest Blogging today is my daughter Courtney. She sent this post to me months ago and it kept getting lost within my in-box…today it has been found. (The post, not the phone.)

On my first day back on campus for my junior year at Purdue, the unthinkable happened… I lost my phone. I had met up with a friend to catch up and drink some bubble tea by the clock tower, and at some point had received a text asking what I was doing later that night. I responded, set my phone down, finished up tea, and walked back to my apartment. Halfway back, I realized that the miniature computer I had only had since last October was not in my purse… or my pockets… and when I walked back to the bench we had been sitting on, I found that it wasn’t there either. I tried to text the friend I had been hanging out with, only to remember that was nearly impossible without a phone.

I traced my steps a few times and said a silent prayer of thanks that I already had dinner plans, so when I arrived at the restaurant I had my friends call my phone and leave a voicemail. “Wait… you need my password to get into my voicemail. WAIT… you need my tracer passcode to get into my phone.” I remotely installed apps for lost phones, set a screen telling anyone who found my phone to call my mom at her number, forced my phone to send me pictures and sound bytes of its location, tried to use GPS (the radius of its potential location was 1856 meters. Thanks, phone), and went on several recon missions until the battery’s inevitable death. For days after I frequented the campus’s lost and found locations and checked the activity online, but all my efforts were fruitless, and remained fruitless for the next two weeks, until I got a SIM card for my high school flip phone. But during those two long weeks, something crazy happened.

I survived the experience.

The thing I was most worried about was becoming a social recluse. How do you make plans without a phone? But I found something encouraging – when my friends wanted to see me or were making group plans, they made the effort to reach me on Facebook or texted the people they thought I would be with to make sure I was still getting included. After a two-day-long withdrawal period, it was even kind of nice not having a phone in my pocket all the time, and I found I was able to focus for longer periods of time on a single thing. The drawback was I did get a little Facebook addicted, but when I wasn’t around a computer that wasn’t really a problem.

Thanks to my incredible parents (who dealt with two weeks of intermittent online chatting, as my computer mic was also broken, taking Skype convos out of the picture) I do have a functioning phone now, and I would absolutely choose having a phone over not having a phone (just being honest). But it was nice to get a little taste of a life unwired; it allowed me to see that I didn’t need to be constantly connected, and the friendships I had were meaningful enough that my friends put a little bit of extra effort into including me. I do feel as though phones and iPads and all this social connecting all the time has driven us a little up the wall, and the confirmation that I could survive without it all was good, as I really do sometimes wonder. It’s something good to keep in mind as we go through our lives in this culture – you can survive without a constant connection!

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Leaving the Nest

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A mother, looking for a safe place to birth and raise her young ones, chose my front porch. She chose well, it was out of the rain, and as a fellow mom, I was careful to not soak her nest when I watered this plant, which suddenly also served as a home.

Then one day, and for four days, the mother laid an egg; four beautiful, small, vulnerable lives, contained in precious, fragile shells. The day the babies were making their way out of their eggs, our family did our best to come and go through the garage, ensuring that the mother could just sit on the nest to keep her little ones warm (moms look out for each other like that).

We adored watching them, they were so ugly that they were cute. There came a day when we began to hear their teeny-tiny tweets, clamoring for their food each time their mother returned to the nest. It made me think of our little ones when we have been gone for awhile. My little ones would come running to the door ready to see if I had something for them, or to tell me of some adventure (or some perceived injustice) while I was away!

Quickly the little uglies were trading their wrinkly, downy skin for real feathers. They filled out and seemed more crowded in the nest. Before we knew it, they began perching on the edge of their home. I’ll never forget watching that first one leave the nest…

Courtney was all packed up and we were loading the car to make the return trip to college for her junior year when it happened. We had just walked outside and I was locking the door when we saw one of the baby birds perched on the edge of the nest. We stopped and watched as it just sat there, and then suddenly ~ it flew away!

“Ohhhhh wait! Are you ready? Don’t fall! Where are you going?!” All things that went through my mind and even were uttered from my lips as my daughter, ready to go herself, and I, watched this bird leave the nest. We looked at each other taking in what we just saw – the obvious significance of the moment not lost on either of us.

We watched the little one fly higher and higher and eventually find a tree. We saw and heard the mom calling to it from the roof next door. I imagine the mom was tweeting “Good job! Look how strong and beautiful you are! I’m so proud of you!”

It’s funny…several years ago, when my friend Barb’s oldest daughter, Alexandria, left the nest, I sent Barb a little bird and enclosed a letter. In the letter I told my friend what a great mom she was and how she (and her husband) had provided such a strong and stable nest for her little ones, that she could be confident as Alexandria left. I was indeed confident that Alexandria would be secure and strong and ready to enter the world, taking with her all the tools, values, lessons and love that had been given her while in the nest. When Courtney left for college two years ago, I received a similar letter from Barb with a different little bird in a nest.

Now on the sidewalk, Courtney and I stood and watched together, with awe and a little anxiousness, as a real bird, left a real nest to make its own way in the real world. Then ~ I drove her to her new apartment at college. As my own little one has left the nest for another year of school, I will be confident (as I told Barb to be) that we have taught her what she needs to know to fly and find her way – and I say to her even now ~ “Good job, Courtney! Look how strong and beautiful you are! I’m so proud of you!”

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Coming Home for the Summer

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Believe it or not, it’s finals week for Courtney. In many ways it seems as if we were just delivering her back to campus for her sophomore year, and now it’s just about over. Lightening speed for me – the one who did not attend all those classes, endure endless lectures and labs, as well as grueling assignments, papers and exams.

I am feeling blessed beyond expectation because she is coming home once again for the summer. We had thought it likely that she would be elsewhere for an internship, but she received an internship, within her field, right here in our town. I get the opportunity to spend another summer with my daughter!! It’s amazing how happy this makes me.

This parenting thing is funny ~ it’s ever changing. Obviously we are in transition in our parenting of her. We do not now, nor will we next week, parent her in the same manner in which we parent Zach (17) or Erin (14). But we do, and will, still parent her during this phase.

What does that look like now? Not a rhetorical question. I’m really wondering. She will be twenty next month. She is smarter than me to be sure (seriously, she’s studying to be a Biological Engineer, I failed 10th grade math). She knows more than me in several arenas, and certainly is more “relevant” than me when it comes to current culture.

One thing I do have is more wisdom gained from more life experience. But this will only mean something if we continue to grow our more adult, parent-child relationship. I believe it is within the continued & growing relationship where opportunities to impart some of that life wisdom can take place.

I wrote here about her coming home for the summer last year and what I did to prepare. And now I am keenly aware that she has had the better part of yet another year to live “independently” (I put it like that because the truth is we mostly fund this independence). The point that matters is that she has been making her own decisions about daily life – without a parent holding her accountable or telling her to get more sleep. Which is part of the growing up process – which is good and keeps her on track to actually grow up and be an adult that contributes to society. Remember, I am not raising kids, I’m raising future adults. I believe she is exactly on track…and the truth is, I’ve not been down this stretch of track before.

It’s constantly new terrain with our oldest children. Poor them…and quite honestly, poor us. So what I will do in these next few days before she comes home is pick up my copy of “You’re Wearing That?” by Deborah Tannen.  I will go straight to Chapter 9 Blending Intimacy and Independence: New Ways of Talking. I will look for some of that wisdom and life experience that I don’t yet have. I will seek out women whose core and family values are similar to mine and I will ask them to meet me for coffee. I will wash her sheets, tuck a welcome home note under her pillow, brace myself for the piles of stuff that will cover my living room for days, draw close to her and give her room. I will be overjoyed to simply look at her across the room. I will be happy for this time with my oldest child, who sits perched on the edge of the nest, trying her wings.

Last year Courtney and I wrote a five part series called Home for the Summer – you can read that here.

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Going to Church

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I want my kids to go to church. Although “going to church” really isn’t the goal.

I wrote here about Zach and Erin going to spend the weekend with Courtney recently. At the end of the article I mentioned that they even went to a church service while together…without parents. Meaning no one told them to go to church. I love this. But even as I write that – I know it isn’t the act of going to church that I desire. I don’t long for obedience, I hope for them to have their own desire to take time out for God.

Lots of people go to church. There was a time (actually there were years) where I “went to church”. It’s what Kevin and I did on a Sunday morning. Then we came home, read the Sunday paper, got groceries, maybe took a nap and then prepared for the work week. I was able to check the box, “Went to church”, but it didn’t carry over into the other parts of my week.

But I do value my kids to going to church because I believe when they go to church, they have an opportunity to focus on, consider, learn more about, and take time to worship God. The hope is that they are taking in teachings, using their minds and their hearts to consider positions, feeling challenged in areas of weaknesses and convicted in areas where they are off track. I hope they use this dedicated time to block out the distractions and worship the one who created and calls them.

The world is constantly crashing in on them. They don’t need to put any effort into being influenced and challenged by culture, but we all need to put effort into holding the world at bay to consider what we believe and what we will do about what we believe.

I don’t long for obedience, I hope for them to have their own desire to take time out for God. When my kids choose church for themselves, my heart feels not pride, but gratitude. I believe one of my “jobs” as a Christian mother is to lead my children to Jesus, introduce them, hope that they take His hand, and then allow Him to lead them in this world.

They will leave my home, I will lose my “majority stake” in influencing them, but if through our partnership with the local church they have their eyes on Jesus then I will be more confident in letting them go.

These Sibling Relationships – read it here.

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Wanting to say No…but having to say Yes.

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Picture this: It’s New Years Eve and my nineteen year old (home from college) has left our home  for a small gathering at a friend’s house. Before long she returns with her friend Kelly ~ it ends up that it’s just the two of them for the evening, so they have decided to accept an invitation for a party at the apartment of a friend – three hours away. She and Kelly stand before me asking if it’s OK if they go on this road trip…on New Years Eve…at 6:00 PM.

“Ummmm….NO. It’s not OK with me. This is the most dangerous night of the year to be on the road.” (Bold and italicized to let you know how that actually sounded out loud – because it is what I said.) The girls say they will understand if we say no, that Kelly’s parents weren’t exactly happy about it either. But in the end, they said that their daughter was twenty years old and ultimately would have to make her own decision. Well, thanks for that. (Said in my head.)

So I head to the garage to talk to Kevin about this, his reaction is the same as mine. (Good.) I tell him it does feel tricky because she is nineteen, and when she’s at college we don’t even know about decisions that maybe are not the most wise. Regardless, I just don’t think it’s a good idea for her to head out. He agrees. No way, not a good idea. I ask him if he’ll come in and tell her that.

As the conversation unfolds, the next thing I am hearing is that she will have to make her own decision. WHAT??!! NO!! What is happening??!!

I tell her I will pay for her and Kelly to go to dinner and a movie if they will stay in town. (Desperate, I know, but I don’t care.) Courtney looks at me and asks if I will be mad if they go. I say yes. I also tell her that I will get over it. (As long as they return safely the next day.) She thanks us for our wisdom, input and the discussion; then she says they are going to go ahead and go on this road trip and she ran upstairs to pack a bag.

I am left standing with frustration, anger, fear and prayers in my heart.

I hug them each, look Kelly in the eye and tell her to make wise driving decisions and to not play the radio loud. (Full on mom talk.) Courtney did text several times on the way down, advising me of a stop for gas as well as a restroom break, and then with their arrival. I also received a text at 3:30 AM telling me “Good night”. She then sent a text in the morning to let me know they were on their way home and of any stops along the way. All good stuff.

This situation was a hard one for me. I did (do) not want to let her go. I wanted (want) to say no and have that be the right and final answer. It used to work that way. But in order for her to grow and for our relationship to grow, I am learning to let go in new ways all the time. It’s a never ending exercise in restraint, relinquishment and reality. I want her to value my input and seek it, trusting that ultimately I will step back and let her decide. This does not come naturally for me but I am willing to adjust, move and grow. I love her so much that I hold her close and let her go.

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