The quiet before the storm

There are so many emotions this week.  2 graduating from 5th grade into middle school and one graduating from high school.  These next few days I feel like are the calm before the storm.  Thursday through Sunday will be a whirlwind of excitement and busyness with little time to really enjoy the moment.  However, these next few days...the quiet moments within those days....the still moments to ponder...this is where the emotion hits.

I am not really even sure the emotions I am feeling. The tears flow, but I am not really sad.  I can't wait for these kids to experience what the Lord has next for them.  I am not really scared, I know they are prepared for the next step.  I am extremely proud and happy, but yet the tears flow.  Magenta...the Golden Girls call that feeling magenta.  Not really yellow with fear or green with envy or blue with sadness...just a mixture of color and emotion all tumbling together and it feels....

magenta.

Simply driving in my car listening to the radio can spark a flood of tears as I think over the past...have I said enough, given the right advice, taught the life lessons up to this point?  I think ahead to the future and wonder how things will change from here on out...the friends, the experiences, the increase in freedom and pray they are strong enough.  It really doesn't matter 5th grade or 12th grade, the thoughts are the same and the changes can make or break them.  Maybe that's the emotional influx...the change.  At their ages, I saw the change as exciting and it didn't evoke much emotion from me at all, but as I get older I see change for what it is, an ending of something you can never return to. Whether good or bad or indifferent, that time is gone and you will never have it again. I pray they lived it well, they loved others well and they cherished that moment in time for what it was.

So I'll enjoy these emotion filled quiet moments because when the graduation ceremonies begin I know I will be caught up in the applause and the smiles and the friends and the family.   I'll look up and it will all be over with only the pictures and memories left behind.