Parenting Absent Children is the Pits

Oh my! It's a time in life that is very difficult. Lately I've sent my kids to the far corners of the earth. Nathan & Harmony, and baby Andre have gone to Papua, Indonesia. It's hard enough to think of not seeing them for a year or two, but knowing that we will miss all of the baby stages of our little grandson is deeply disturbing. We are proud of them and yet we are sacrificing so much. Now I know what the "Miss" is in Missionary parents. I have found some help at the website for Parents of Missionaries, found at http://www.pomnet.org/voices-email.php and I have appreciated their personal emails to me during my hardest times. The best help I have found, though, is in hearing their voices over Skype. We can't use the webca, unfortunately, because their slow phone lines can't handle the bandwidth; but our blood pressure tends to normalize after an occasional session visiting.

Now add to that heartache the extra longing and yes, fear, that we experience at the same time while our youngest son Jordan is in the Persian Gulf on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Again, we are so proud of him, but it is tempered by our wishing that he wasn't there. There is a lot of "not knowing" that gives us the hardest time. Not knowing exactly where he is, or exactly what he is doing, or exactly HOW he is doing, or exactly when we will hear from him again - well, it's just a constant uncertainty.

And then there is the normal missing of our married son John and his wife Yvonne, who live across the country from us. There is a lot of "not knowing" involved in that, too.

So whether it's missionary parenting, military parenting, or my own missing my babies kind of missing, it's just hard. I try not to obsess about it. My comfort is email, phones, and -best of all - knowing that the Creator God can watch over them wherever they are on this earth.