I am not ready. 

I am take-a-sedative (herbal, but not that kind of herbal) or stress-clean-the-house kind of not ready. 

I am so not ready that I can’t even wrap my head around it, I’m so not ready. 

My daughter is ready. 

She is sooooo ready that the people around her can feel it seeping out of her pores. She is so ready that people stop her in the library and intuitively ask her if she is ready? 

And boy is she ready. She’s been ready for two years. 

As I look at my girl I see her readiness and feel my own unreadiness. 

Sure, she’s nervous about things that other people look at her in shock for even worrying about. Like will she make friends. Because she will, in abundance. 

And I’m ready for her. I’m ready for her to be ready because she is so ready. I know these things are good for her, that kindergarten will be a place of remembering playing house and water tables and the elusive crab in the class fish tank. 

But I’m not quite ready for me. Because, you see, change in her life means change in mine. A change of time-focus and leaping into situations that have snowballed me into a world of newness and wobbly legs. 

The commitment that I made to myself years ago that when change came for her I would actively seek change myself. That the time when she’s away from me and I from her would be spent in walking alongside others. That I would stretch my legs,heart, and brain back to the back-burner part of myself, not dormant, but shared in time and space with the care of young ones. 

And now it is time and she’s ready and sleeping and I’m awake and contemplating the cleaning. I may have already taken the ‘not that kind of herbal’ sedative. 

Because I know the old but don’t know the new. Like I reassure my children as they enter new classrooms and engage with new teachers, I too want to hear, ‘you’ll be fine’. (my glorious husband has offered to pray for me when he comes to bed)

God and I have chatted about this new change. Well, I have chatted and felt too spun around to be able to listen much. But I do try. 

And sometimes the listening comes in the moment while I’m talking. 

My middle child, the lightbulb spirit child, was being cuddled and prayed over when I knew that there was something more for him. I asked him if he remembered Joshua and his nerves before he went to Jericho? And then I said, ‘and God brought those walls down to crumbs’. 

“Be Strong and Courageous. Do not be afraid. The Lord God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

Wherever, no matter what. 

Despite the nerves and new beginnings and insecurities of self and situation, God is there in Spirit and in Truth. 

My son nodded, but still a little sceptical. But you see, he doesn’t have the years of new beginnings I’ve had. 

Doesn’t have the years of God’s presence, going before and hemming behind. 

Hasn’t yet seen the depth of faithfulness I’ve seen. 

Hasn’t seen enough that he can look at the young ones he loves and offer them the gift of his certainty that we are always in God’s presence and palm.

But his time will come, and tomorrow’s Godly faithfulness will resonate with his soul. 

And it will resonate with mine, in present and memory.