No One Told Me It Was Gonna Be This Way!
You clapped after reading that title, didn't you? These thoughts have been rolling around in my head ever since a friend said to me, when looking at our family pictures from Easter, "I can't imagine you in Florida anymore!" No one told me it was going to be this way. No one said how easy it is to slip into the daily rhythms of your grown children's lives. While I was raising my kids, my parents were 1000 miles away. So when we saw them, it was 24/7 togetherness, until they hopped on a plane, and we went back to our normal routines. I am just now learning what it is like to be present in my kids' lives without living with my kids. And it's better than I could have imagined. Don't get me wrong - we LOVED our freedom of the "Florida years", where dinner out was on a whim, lazy Sundays were spent at the pool. Life revolved around "the next trip" and "companion flights" and "facetimes." Mike and I were able to focus...