Letting your Children Grow Up

It was such a short time ago that it all began. I still wonder what my part was and if my presence was of any real value. The beginning and now the end seem to be opposites of yet another testament of this life’s expressions of duality. I cried at his birth and it should be no surprise that I cried at his departure.

My son left today. He will never come back

At least not the same as it was before. I have known this intellectually for years and have prepared to let him go always knowing that his time with us would be limited. But now he’s gone.

Is it funny that I as his father am the one found crying?

I don’t know. I just know what I feel. I miss him. I don’t know what else to say. It’s his time, as it is ours, to expand fully and with this understanding it gets easier. But I still miss him. It’s only been minutes since we put him on the plane but he’ll never come back the same. He’s off to experience life without the tethers of attachment that I have embraced as so real.

Only recently have I realized the nature of my attachments. Everything that I have held onto has to be released. I have been processing the simplicity of this for years in my spiritual awakening and development and yet have I been saving my strongest attachments for last. It’s easy to recognize that I have put armor around this palace as if they and I needed to protect that, which we were creating.

When my wife Karen was pregnant with our son I was shocked of her decision to want to deliver our first born at home. I wasn’t prepared for this, or many other of her decisions, but I remember so well crying in the car by myself outside our home praying that the child she carried wouldn’t take her life. This scared me. It challenged my beliefs. I thought I had some faith but I realized all that I cared about was at risk. Naturally, the moment would come and selfishly I prayed if there were complications that it would be the baby and not Karen’s life that would be at stake. But I knew everything was on the line. It was part of the reason I was slow to consider having children because I didn’t want to risk what I had created in my relationship.

Now I have put it all on the line once again. I don’t possess anything. I don’t own my relationship and certainly I don’t even hold a position of authority as the teenage years with spiritually mature children clearly have illuminated. I have become again aware that I must let go of everything in an effort for me to exist in the totality of my expressions.

I don’t know if he’s letting me go or if I’m letting him go

What’s the difference? I am not sure. I do know it’s time and I can’t go back. It’s time to go forward no longer holding onto memories and experiences as if they somehow create my life. My presence in the moment is all that I have. I choose to be me. I choose to offer him an example of my being free. Or again, is it him teaching me? Still I can’t discern the difference. His choice of freedom is something we can all feel. It is time to let go and to exist as a family but not necessarily the same way as it has been done. It will never be the same.

I love him

I cry as I write this because of all the many times that I can feel where my anger, control, and projections offered my son encouragement to carry that which I have been trying to release. Will he remove it or will he carry those traditions of emotion that could constrain him? He will have to address this. He is well prepared. He has been encouraged to connect or again was it him that encouraged us to connect?

He was the one that expressed his frustrations in attending the organizational worship where for years we had chosen to attend. He was the one who said to his sister “grab your stuff we’re leaving” as we left the congregation for the last time. He was the one that questioned us again wanting to be sure that we wouldn’t be going back as we drove from the Church parking lot. It was our son who clearly stated that God and Church was “outside in nature.” When I asked what this meant, when he was only six, Grant responded that God was everywhere. I laughed within about the clarity of Grant’s perception but not then fully comprehending the nature of his teaching.

My son is gone

His wisdom and presence is to be found elsewhere. It still makes me cry wondering if I appreciated all that he gave to me and to us. I don’t know if I expressed it clearly. Did I? Does he know of my feelings for him or will he remember the incessant nagging of my wanting his room clean. I hope that in his maturity he will be able to retain better memories than some of the ones that still haunt me.

My son was never mine I acknowledge this but perhaps I could have been a better steward. Was I attentive or selfishly preoccupied in my own growth of letting go of those things that I used to carry from my previous family. I want to be free and so do I want him and every member of my family to create this place of enlightenment from within. Quite clearly I do not want it just for me, or those that I call my family, but I cry today that you too will embrace it from within.

How often I have been spiritually led to offer instruction while still in the midst of my own growth

Is it fair? Was I prepared? I do know in confidence of that which is within me and growing. It is my purpose to remove my own tethers to exist in the totality of my being.

I release him knowing that he is grown. He is of my flesh but really of my spirit. His vibration resonates within me I can feel it. I wonder how many missed opportunities that I created in not sharing my inner most feelings. He was my teacher but how often I claimed to be the one in authority. It is a farce, the illusion of authority I carried from my birth family. There is no such separation. I love him and this too is why I cry today.

can I continue to share the real me, that which I see within him, with others within or outside our family?

It is a true reflection. It has been hard and unreasonable. Unreasonable in that the reflection was so difficult, especially by my son, where I squirmed and screamed in rebellion of my own. I felt so uncomfortable in his strength and yet was it not my own that he was reflecting? I know the answer. It still makes me uncomfortable. His truth was direct and untarnished. He was unabashedly straightforward. Sometimes it felt hard yet it was always filled with love even when he was pushing. Or was I pushing him to be free when in truth I had not claimed this of my own regard? I am embarrassed to say but the truth is “yes.”

I cry today because in letting him go I now know that I must also choose this same road. I’m riddled with questions, what to expect and what to look for but isn’t it all just a choice? Is it my choice to live as my fullest self? Is it my choice to live freely? Then how can there be rules or perceptions that pull me or cover me like a spiders web cloaking its prey. I am free. He is free. He has yet again shown me the simplicity in choosing to just to be. It is my choice. I thank my son, and all of the rest of our family, for the truth in their reflection which I have found difficult to see.

I choose to be free

I choose to exist in the same freedom that he so naturally enjoys in his departure from the nest. Maybe we have contributed something that he would be so comfortable in his leaving. Missing only what we have become accustomed to in the familiarity of physical togetherness.

We will never be together in the same way again. What is before him is the same that is before me and so many others. Will I choose to be attached to that which was never mine? Will I become “old” in my choice to start living in the past versus stepping forward into the moment? The answer is simple but the struggles seem real and yet I know that they are not. I will not quit and become attached to the past and its heaviness. I can’t hold on to something that was never mine.

I cry today in honor of his choice to be free

It is no longer a concept as he steps onto a plane bound for another country … it is not just symbolic. He intends to transcend the cultures of this earth and return home to those places that really carry his energy. Grant was never from this galaxy and this too was shown to me later in my own spiritual awakening. He has come to reclaim his freedom at this time, which is divinely inspired. His timing is perfect.

How can I pretend to be free when I have not embraced this truth within? Everything must change. I feel that everything is at risk and just like with my son’s conception its too late to reverse what has been done. I can no longer hide and project, especially toward those most intimate to me, that they are to blame for my not choosing to be free. It is just a choice. Something that I have heard and facilitated from Spirit a million times.

I can’t hold on or retreat hoping that my shell will contain me. It is impossible, I must come out. I can’t stay pent up grasping memories that were never real except for the feelings that I attached to them. I have come to the end of my attachments or at least those discovered in this moment. I have no need to be held down any longer. I must be free. Like my son I must travel in the ethereal plains no longer afraid to exist in higher dimensions that are often misunderstood by the lower frequencies of understanding. It doesn’t matter I must lift off not just for a moment but for the totality of my existence here. I can’t stay on the ground any longer. I can no longer afford the hesitations that I have created. I must go. Is it Grant who is leaving the family or is it me?

I must go. I cannot hang on in pretense that I am attached

Clearly I have been and I do acknowledge the place that has fostered my remembrance of love. However, I am not bound. Will I accept my place to resonate on the highest levels of this incarnation? The answer is “yes.” Will I loose that which I have created and become accustomed to? Maybe, but again it was never mine from the beginning.

Will I be alone and not accepted in my choice to live outside the parameters of what society calls and labels as normal? It doesn’t matter. I do this because it is me. I have held back analyzing and wondering “What if?.” Trying to determine what would be the consequence of my choice to exist on this next level of truth. There is no consequence, this too is just another mirage of the shell to keep me from existing.

Like my son I choose to travel today yet into another place where I don’t know the answers. I choose to once again fearlessly explore the very essence of my being. I choose to exist not in fear or anxiety of what I will find but rejoice in the journey of all that will be discovered. How could I have accepted the perceptions of security under this precept?

I cry today because of my choices of constraint

I don’t cry out of self-pity only just now realizing that I could have made this choice many many years ago. I cry in honor of the example given to me yet again by my son’s choice to be. I even cry as a man taught that this expression isn’t an appropriate emotion and that anger was. I cry in honor of the profound feminine beauty to be in touch with my feelings. I cry realizing that these feelings were always a part of me until my choice to push them away trying to conform to those around me.

Is my son comfortable with his beauty? I hope so. This too is something at times I have reflected only to take it away with aspects of conditional love that felt so real in my own previous family. He can only become in touch with his own reflection when he chooses to. I know that it is within him. I can see it and it is a beautiful part of his masculinity. My son is a treasure of beauty that has always been spinning in spiritual alignment.

Am I now choosing to idolize him in reflection of his choice to no longer be with us? I must now question this for he too was not perfect. But how interesting that I would create the need to canonize him. This too is another devious trick of the shell (ego) to keep me attached to the past. I do remember my son’s pushing and the shoving to exist within his own skin. I have hoped that I acted as an adult during these times of his personal self expression when on countless occasions my actions were anything but mature. I yelled when I was being asked to listen. I handed out advice when Grant was merely sharing an experience. I often gave when in fact I should have received. How many times my towering son would lean over to hug me only to share his precious love and energy that he said “I needed” when in fact I repelled as if the embrace was grotesque.

I cry today in honor of his unconditional love

It was him that would offer me forgiveness of my actions when I could barely muster the energy to ask for it out of shear embarrassment that I might be rejected. He accepted me so often when I would not accept myself. It was only weeks ago that he and his sister shared with me that “I didn’t love myself.” Wanting to rage in all that I have accomplished I sat again in dismay of being seen from the inside out.

I do not deny the wisdom that Grant and his sister have given me … or at least not as much. But I wonder how much of the Divine wisdom, such as their reflection, that I have determined to filter and or block? Will I accept the love that is Divinely mine? For if I cannot accept their love how is it possible for me to accept that love that is Divinely innate within me? I know the answer but do I really feel the total energy and Divine love? I must and therefore I do. Not out of duty or attachment but in full comprehension that this is the real me. There is nothing to do but accept my presence in full.

I cry today in respect of what I have come to realize in my choice to have children

What I would have missed. It isn’t something everyone has to do to become aware it is just another piece of what I have created. Thank you seems inordinately plain and simple for all that I feel as I wipe the tears from running down my cheeks. It is the best that I can do. I cry today for his choice to be with us during his time of adolescence. I release him to the world not as a boy who needs protecting but as a man who offers extraordinary light.

I cherish the thought that he will manifest relationships that will continue to reflect and encourage what is already his. He is my son and I will miss him. But I give him to you in honor of what he has given to me. Will you allow me to share my gratitude for all that he has reflected? Share my emotion as my words capture feelings that fill my eyes with the water making this so hard to type. Allow me give to you what has been given so freely to me. Grant me the power of encouragement to extend the love that is found in his smile.

I cry today in tears of joy that his choice allowed him to stay with us yet a little while. I remain attentive to all that he will create. His expressions may irritate, provoke, or just create tears of happiness as they do currently with me. But I can assure that his path will illuminate and reflect that which is the simplicity of love. I love my son, not that he is mine or of me, but that which he has shared in wisdom of the real me.