They said yes

It came. The acceptance letter.

The one that says that this fall, the baby girl who first made me a Momma will step on a plane and into her future.

The one that says that homeschooling wasn’t a hurdle in the admissions game.

The one that says that she has begun, in earnest now, to follow Him on her own terms.

Come late August, Mary Hannah will officially be a student in a missions-focused midwifery college.

Of course, I cried when the letter came. I cried and hugged her neck, and she danced and laughed, and together we relived every intense emotion of our seventeen and half years together in the span of five glorious minutes. Suddenly she was thirteen months old and suffering through her first ear infection, and she was four and stubbornly refusing to pull off her muddy boots before coming in the house, and she was nine and crying over math, and she was fourteen and hurt by a friendship gone wrong. She was ten months and taking her first steps, and she was three and sitting astride a horse for the first time, and she was seven and smitten with “Little Women,” and she was sixteen and behind the wheel of our big white van with a silly grin plastered on her face.  And I was there the whole time, learning as I went, doing my best, and praying that it was enough.

As I write this, she’s upstairs, squealing into the ear of her best friend across a phone line reaching back to Washington and dreaming of what the next years hold. I’m downstairs, and the house is alive, brimming with the sounds of children recreating the story of Peter Rabbit, playing bass guitar, rattling the bucket of colored pencils in an attempt to find the perfect shade of pink. It’s just another afternoon, another little window of time between school and dinner when we all go our separate ways for a bit and unwind. Around me, there is the delighted semi-chaos of a growing family. Nothing has changed, but everything has shifted. The letter came … and a new season has begun.