When You Finally Let Go

God has a sense of humor and is also sneaky. It has taken me months to learn a lesson that I thought I already knew. My kid is a grown woman and is capable of making her own decisions without my (constant) input (nagging).

When my daughter moved home after living in New York for two years, I was thrilled and a little apprehensive. We asked her to plan to live at home initially because we figured it would take a minute for her to find a job and we wanted a free house-sitter this summer while we are in Colorado.

I have always been a relatively chill mother. I knew she had good sense. She has always been a good girl. She always did her homework. She is honest to a fault. There have been plenty of times I have encouraged her not to tell me things. She is the one who goes to pick up the friends who make bad choices. She has a great work ethic. I knew she would make the transition back to Nashville without a hitch.

We even talked about it before she moved home. I told her if I overstepped my boundaries and got in her business, that she needed to tell me. She agreed that she would. It was going to be fine.

Then she moved home and I lost my mind. Really. It was like I was possessed by the worst version of myself. “What are you doing? Where have you applied? Why don’t you get someone to look at your resume? Are you wearing that? Aren’t you going to put on some makeup? You should be networking.” And this was not for a week or two, but for a couple (or more) months. I was a nervous wreck. I wanted to kill her at some point of every day. My husband just stared at me as I meddled and picked and nagged and suggested and encouraged. “She is not you,” he said. I told him I did not want her to be me, but….

I talked to my best friends. “I have lost my mind,” I said. “Yes, you have,” they agreed. They all told me that she would be fine and I needed to let her figure it out. I wanted to, but I could not do it. She was not figuring it out. She wasn’t doing any of the things I expected.

She was not doing any of the things I expected.

I am an avid reader, and by that I mean I read a stupid number of novels. After years of reading helpful, encouraging, uplifting manuscripts, I now devour mysteries, especially historical mysteries. Over the last several weeks, I have read four or five books where a mother’s expectations for her adult daughter were central to the plot. Somehow in print, it was easy to see how controlling, selfish, and obtuse the mother was. Each mother character’s refusal to see or treat her adult daughter like an individual was so clear, so obvious. And, sadly, it took more than a few before I got the message. But, then there it was. My daughter is not me. And that is fine. That is good. That is how it should be.

Knowing I was wrong was not enough to shut me up. Seeing myself in print in story after story finally got my attention. I stopped nagging and started praying. I actually let it go in my mind and trusted her to figure it out.

She got a job offer last night. It is a great opportunity and she will be amazing in this new role. I know she would have liked to have landed a job much faster than she did, but I think God had a lesson for me and it appears I am a slow learner. As I said, God is sneaky, but He is relentless.