“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” – Ecclesiastes 3:1, NIV Bible

When I was a kid, I always thought that it was cruel the way that three months of school felt like a lifetime and yet three months of summer felt like a blink of an eye. Somehow, January through March crawled slow as molasses while I was sitting in school, but June through August flew by while sitting at the pool or hanging out with my friends or doing just about anything other than school. How was it possible that the same three month period of time could feel so differently?

As an adult, I have come to view summer differently in many ways than I did as a child. Instead of wanting summer to last forever like I did when I was school aged, I, like so many other adults and parents that I know, am totally ready for fall to arrive by this point!

Don’t get me wrong - just three short months ago, I was completely ready for summer. Between accompanying multiple end of school year choir concerts, preparing for a college graduation, moving two college kids home, planning for a family reunion, and juggling end of school year activities for our youngest, I was really looking forward to some down time. I was ready for whatever New England had in store for me for 3 glorious summer months.

But, now I am ready for fall (it is still August, mind you)! Although this has been a really screwy weather summer with more rain than we have seen in almost 100 years, wildfire smoke from Canada making the sky hazy and the sun look bright orange, and humidity that made it feel like we were living in a terrarium, summer still has meant relaxing with friends and family, slowing down our pace, taking vacations and doing the things that we just don’t have time to do during the rest of the year. It has been lovely. It has been relaxing and rejuvenating. And now I am done with it. I am ready for a new “season”.

I find this concept of “a time for every season” so relevant in all aspects of my life. Nothing lasts forever, right? Seasons. Jobs. Buildings. Situations. Most relationships. Cell phone batteries. People. Seriously – everything (and everyone) eventually comes to an end. So, enjoy the now and look forward to the future with optimism. There is a simple beauty in this idea because we all know that change is going to come – eventually.

Knowing that something will come to an end gives us an opportunity to relish it. To appreciate it. To not squander it. To learn from it. This does not mean that we may not want it to end. Sometimes we wish that something could keep right on going for as long as possible. On the contrary, there are times we are ready for something to end when we have exhausted what it has given us. Sometimes these two things come into direct conflict. The end of summer with kids heading to college or out on their own can be a perfect example of this dichotomy. The following story illustrates it pretty well.

A few years ago, when my eldest daughter, Zoe, was getting ready to head off for her first year of college, I was working out at the gym and struck up a conversation with a friend who we will call “Kelly”. It was mid-summer and there were just a few weeks left until my husband and I were heading to Ann Arbor to drop Zoe off at the University of Michigan.

Kelly had two children of her own and both of them were preparing to move into their respective colleges within the following few weeks as well. Kelly made the egregious error of innocuously asking me how I was doing and I totally unloaded on her. “Oh my God, Kelly, I feel really badly but I cannot wait until we drop Zoe off at school because we are fighting like cats and dogs about everything with her,” I lamented. “I can’t believe that she will be leaving in a few short weeks and I wish it wasn’t like this right now.”

Kelly just smiled at me and patted me on the back. I had no idea how she could be so calm about things because she had two kids going through this period and I only had one! Kelly said, “It’s time, Ame. It’s time for her to go and move on. She is pulling away from you and letting you know that it is her time to fly and be independent and that she is ready. If she wasn’t pushing back on you so hard, it would be worrisome because maybe she was not ready. But, she is and this is her way of telling you that there was a time for her to be here with you, and now it is a time for her to strike out on her own.”

I was dumbstruck. Although I don’t recall her exact words to me, the gist was clear. I was trying to hold on to my “season” as a parent and Zoe was ready to change “seasons” and fly into young adulthood. Zoe was ready to get the heck out of dodge and I was not quite ready. Kelly’s words were so impactful and they helped me to do a better job with my son when he went off to school two years later. (At least, I did in my own mind-he might disagree). Perhaps I will master it when our youngest leaves the nest in a few years.

So, as summer winds down and I say goodbye to having my three kids under my roof, I am ready for the change of season. But, I am enjoying the now for a few more days and weeks. I look forward to what the fall will bring – beautiful foliage, opportunities to reconnect with friends, learning opportunities, etc. And I will reminisce about the chaos of having had all five of us under the same roof together for a few months. It is time to let go.

Happy Fall. Here is to the changing of the season and the promise of the new activity it will bring.