The Hardest Job...

When I believe I have a hold on THE HARDEST JOB, 

I find that something new comes about, I learn something!

Growing up I wanted to be a nurse. I began volunteering as a Candy Striper at the hospital at age 11. I figured out a way to continue to volunteer during the school year in the Emergency Room. I saw things no teenager should see or experience. I saw the death of a friend of our family, actually helped take him to the morgue. I was taken 'hostage' in the enclosed nursing station by a drunk driver that had sent a family to the trauma hospital. He had only a cut on his chin from the accident. A police officer subdued him for my safety leaving another cut and the police officer with a broken hand. Even through the traumatic situations in the ER my love grew for Nursing and I graduated with a BSN from Florida Atlantic University, with honors! I became an ICU nurse and had many more interesting experiences.

In 1988 I became the wife of my wonderful husband followed by becoming a mother the first time in 1990. I stepped away from full time  hospital nursing when my second son was two years old and did a variety of positions as a nurse. I became a full time wife and mother. With my hubby's job and crazy travel and moving my job was family manager. We have lived in more than 12 different places in three countries, I handled all of the transactions. During this time I have been to more than a million baseball fields in about a million areas (ok just a little exaggeration but not too much with a hubby in baseball and all three boys playing!).

But no matter the craziness of my nursing career or the craziness of being a family manager THE HARDEST JOB of all has been being a Mother. I love my boys (men) and I love their individual personalities and their talents. What I don't love about THE HARDEST JOB is that each and every time you believe you are ahead of a possible issue something else comes up to bite you in the butt!!!! When they are doing well in school you think, I've got this. Then you get a note from the school that they have detention. When they are excelling in sports and you think they are finally in a groove, they get a new coach. When they are hanging around a good group of friends and you think their character is growing in a new and delightful way, they end up getting in trouble for doing something stupid with said group of friends. When they are strong in their faith and you believe it will never falter, they meet someone that encourages them to question God and His existence.

Now that I am coming to the end of my run as a full time mother at home holding everything together as best I can, I have begun reflecting on all the things I really didn't have a handle on. I have found that no matter what I try to control that things still go in a direction that I never thought it would. In these times of thinking I was in control of THE HARDEST JOB there was something that I totally forgot about and only remembered when I 'failed'.

"He says, "Be still and know that I am God,"" Psalm 46:10a 

I am not God!!!!!!!!!  He loves my children so much more than I do or even can. He has the path laid out for my children's future and He will succeed in prospering them in what He wants them to prosper in. I have learned, during this impending Empty Nest, that I need to rely on Jesus more and me less. I need to embrace Him more and me less. I need to love Him more and release my children to Him as I have many times before but this time not take them back, leave them to Him.

What is your hardest job? What are you holding on to tighter than you are holding on to God? What can you begin to do now to release that to God and let Him be the Mighty Him that only He can be?