Morning Coffee Musings
When the Babies Grow Up
You spend years teaching them how to tie their shoes, brush their teeth, and say “yes ma’am” without rolling their eyes. You make peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off, sit through school plays and ballgames and pray they’ll just please sleep through the night.
Then one day, you blink and those same babies, your babies, are taller than you, driving a car and telling you how to fix your phone.
When they’re little, you’re the sun they orbit around. Every scraped knee, every bedtime story, every question about why the sky is blue, it all comes to you. But when they’re grown, your job changes. You move from “director of operations” to “consultant on call.” They don’t need you to pack their lunch anymore, but they still need you, just in a quieter, softer way.
Sometimes, that quieter love hurts a little. Especially when things get strained. When they pull back or speak truths that sting. When they tell you how you hurt them, or how they’re finding their own way. It’s easy to get defensive, it’s human….but love asks us to stay still, to stay present and to listen, even through the hard and the harsh.
The healing comes in the moments when we don’t rush to explain ourselves. When we let the silence stretch long enough for both hearts to breathe.
Being a parent of an adult means you love them through their independence and their opinions. You remember who they were, who they are, and who they’re still becoming…even when it hurts a little…..And some mornings, with coffee in hand, you’ll remember that tiny hand in yours, and realize… love doesn’t end when they grow up. It just changes shape.
Love you,
Kari
