Michaela is a married woman! We enjoyed a simple ceremony on Monday afternoon and, after a sweet reception, she and Caleb hit the road to begin their new life together. And just like that, Aileen and I are finished raising children. One child is in the arms of Jesus and two are in the arms of their husbands. All three know the Lord—Nick by sight, and Abby and Michaela by faith. We’re so thankful for his grace.
This is not to say, of course, that we are finished with parenting altogether or that there has been some radical break in our family. It just means that Aileen and I have finished the stage of life in which we are the ones who are primarily responsible for our children. We have finished the task that consumed us since March 5, 2000 when Nick was born—raising them in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” So now what?
Aileen and I have been anticipating this for some time and have long-since begun to prepare ourselves for it. We don’t know all that this stage of life will hold, of course, nor how long it will last. But we do know that we want to live it well. It could be that God grants us decades of life together as empty nesters or it could be that God calls one of us to himself before we even begin to adjust to it. It could be that tragedy strikes and an empty nest becomes full again. We have no way to see into the future or even to anticipate what it may hold. Yet uncertainty is one of life’s few certainties and we do not mean for it to paralyze us or keep us from embracing the new opportunities that may lie before us.
Of course, we aren’t old yet and aren’t anywhere near the age when we would begin to significantly slow down or think about retirement—Aileen turned 50 a couple of days ago and I’ll catch up to her in December. Our vocational commitments continue unabated, with me pressing on with my writing and Aileen pressing on in her part-time work and church-based ministries. We still have many claims on our time.
In the years to come, we want to faithfully serve our children and grandchildren, of course. Abby and her family live just a few minutes away and our lives already overlap a fair bit. Michaela and Caleb plan to move to this area once they have finished their undergraduate degrees, so we expect they will also eventually end up nearby, at least for a time. We hope that we will continue to function as an extended family unit, even as we also function as three distinct families. I have been asking friends who are a bit farther along in life for tips on doing all of this well and am learning a lot from them. So, for example, we plan to convert what was formerly Michaela’s bedroom into a grandchild-friendly room for when our girls and their husbands need a night or two to themselves.
We also want to serve our church in a renewed way now that we will have fewer family responsibilities. We don’t know all this may entail, especially since our church is spread over a vast area of a busy city that boasts some of the world’s worst traffic—factors that can make even a simple visit a significant commitment. But as we think and pray about the future, we want it to be a future in which we give much of our time, energy, and (we trust) wisdom to our local church.
We also want to serve one another. Aileen and I have been together since we were teenagers and we still really enjoy each other’s company. We see that we now probably have more years behind us than ahead and we want to make the most of them together. For one thing, I may travel less now. While Aileen has the freedom to travel with me, she does not enjoy it as much as I do and struggles with the long flights, late nights, noisy hotels, and all the rest. Many conferences or events won’t pay for a spouse to come along, so that makes it expensive. As we consider all the different factors, we see ourselves spending more time at home and less time away—which is to say, more time together and less time apart.
Just as I was finishing up this article, I spotted this quote from old Talmage. It seems fitting. “Marriage has taken some of the members of the family, death has taken other members of the family, and after a while father and mother wake up to find their family just the size it was when they started, and they would be lonesome and lost in a large house; hence they move out of it.”
When we were newly married, we bought a small starter home and never left it, so we don’t plan to move out of it anytime soon. However, whatever what the future holds, we are on good terms with the one who holds the future. We trust him deeply and look forward to what he’s got for us. He has been with us through every other stage of our lives, and we have every confidence that he will continue to be with us in all the stages to come.
