We Are Now A Party of Five

 Our oldest got married two weeks ago and it was the most beautiful day. 

The weeks leading up to the wedding were filled with a flurry of plans, dress shopping, wedding showers, and everything else that comes with a wedding.

I know most of the excitement of that day is centered on the bride, as it should be. But I couldn’t help but think that this is about the groom too.

There is a fleeting moment, as a mother, when all the years you have spent pouring into your son come flooding back. It happens quickly and without warning.

I don’t remember everything we said to each other that day, but I do know I said, “I love you, and I’m proud of you,” at least a thousand times. I remember what it felt like to hold him, the weight of him in my arms, and realizing he wasn’t fully mine in the same way anymore.

I wasn’t sad—well, maybe a little—but I was mostly proud. Proud of the man he had become. I was grateful for the woman he chose and for how completely she loved him. It was a joy-filled day.

But I was quietly grieving something different. I was grieving that something had changed forever.

As I looked at my son several times throughout the day, I kept seeing the curly-haired little boy who would sit in my lap on the couch, snuggled under the covers, watching Blue’s Clues. I thought of the baseball games, the stinky, dirty uniforms I washed over the years, the school projects I helped him with, and the family vacations we took. I remembered the moments when I was simply able to be with him and talk with him—the random conversations that somehow turned into meaningful ones.

The little boy his daddy and I raised was now a man stepping into his future.

And isn’t that exactly how it’s meant to be? Isn’t that the goal? We raise them so they can leave, so they can stand on their own—to find love and a partner who will walk beside them in this life.

But no one prepares you for how deeply your love for that little boy changes you and shapes you, or how fiercely you feel the shift when it’s time to let go—to hand them off.

All the years of praying and saying, “Be careful, don’t speed,” of knowing when he just needed me to listen or when he needed advice—they all led here. There is a time in between when you still hold them, but you are also releasing them to someone else. And something beautiful happens when you realize you haven’t lost him—you have simply had a front-row seat to watch it all unfold. And what an amazing seat it has been.

And now that seat allows you to watch the beginning of a new season. That boy who once needed you for everything is now a man who carries with him everything you taught and shared with him.

Motherhood changes. Instead of being front and center, cheering the loudest, I now cheer from a quieter place—still strong, steady, and providing a soft landing, but perhaps from the second row instead of the first.

As his bride made her way to the front of the altar to meet him, I took an extra moment to look at him and soak it all in. And in that moment, he was not a groom, but simply my son.

It was worth every moment, every memory, every tear, every smile. Every late night of worry and repeated prayers over his entire life. He was the little boy who stole my heart. 

I wouldn't trade any of it for anything.