There are seasons in every life. Some seasons are easy, others are interesting, some are boring, some are painful, and some seem to never end.

When I was a young mom, I thought the diapers and sleepless nights and painfully repetitive answers to my toddlers’ questions would never end.

Then what I call the “ballfield years” arrived. Summers were long and hot and sticky and long. Saturday mornings on a field or in a gym watching my child was sweet for about ten minutes and then it was exhausting.

All of a sudden my life transitioned into the long, slow goodbye.

Parenting adolescents is the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Harder than moving out on my own. Harder than adjusting to marriage. Harder than moving to my husband’s hometown and starting my life over—again. Adolescents are still egocentric. The transition from egocentric to self-sufficient is tricky and confusing for them. They are sitting at the grown-ups table without a kid’s menu. The rules they always thought were black and white are suddenly gray and elastic. Teaching a child to solve his own problems and deal with his own emotions is terrifying. Overnight I went from the one person who could make it all better, to the one person who cannot fix anything under any circumstance.

The scariest part about raising an adolescent child is the discovery of whether or not you and your spouse actually made it out of adolescence yourselves! Thankfully we did, but it is so easy to fall into the old habits that used to plague your own growing phase. The well worn, “Who’s the 12 year old here?” still echoes in these walls.

This long goodbye—as I have renamed adolescence—is for me, a joyful sorrow. It is like living in a perpetual state of the oxymoronic: seriously funny and ridiculouly serious. I have existed in this state of joyful sorrow, training our sons to leave us, for over a decade. The last bird is going to launch in less than a year. I am so happy for him and so sad for me all at the same exact moment.

The season is going to change again and I have no idea what to do next. What windows will open when all the doors are closed? I still have half a century of living to do and I refuse to live a half life. I am however, completely frozen in place just now. I practiced letting go well for years: going to school, riding the bus, sleepovers, summer camp, driving a car, moving away to college. I learned to let go so well that I have forgotten how to start again.

Maybe what I want is an epilogue to our story, but in real life there is only the afterword.

Thanks for loving me through these next seasons dear ones. I am boldly asking for help. I am genuinely living through humor. And I always hold onto hope.

Love y’all, Marla