Senior year of High School

I have a senior in high school this year.  This will be the ninth graduating senior I will have survived.  Those of you with high school seniors will relate.  I have often commented to friends that senior year is God's way of helping parents let go. As their children start senior year, many a mom moans and sighs about how will they ever let their baby go. Those same moms, by the time June arrives, are ready to help the child pack!  

It may seem flippant to claim this is God's way... but it certainly is an understandable, natural, predictable and important part of the process of acquiring independence.  Anyone who has raised even a middle schooler is painfully familiar with a child pushing away from their support system.  In order to be ready to live without parents close by, kids have to push away, and it is not a fun process.  As they learn good decision making, they practice...often practicing with bad decisions.

I read once that "Good judgment come from experience and experience comes from bad judgment." It was attributed to a Jim Horning in some places and in others to "unknown." Whoever came up with it was on target.  So, whenever one of mine exercises bad judgment I try to convince myself that this is part of the road to good judgment. Do I like it, no.  Can we survive it?  Probably.  I have to hope and believe. Besides, I have three more who will give me their own variations on the senior year challenge in years to come. So, I keep going, keep breathing, and keep praying that the consequences of bad choices won't be too damaging, that the learning process will be quick and sure.  

Oh yes.... and I keep counting down the days to graduation.