I can’t believe it—the sun is shining! Have you ever taken sunlight for granted until it disappeared for weeks on end? I have, but no more. Today I’m praising God for Monday morning sunlight in the middle of January!

This weekend we had dinner with two other Safe Haven families. How I needed the intimacy of that dinner! The larger parent group has been meeting monthly for the past couple of years, which has been good, with some relationships beginning to flower within the meetings. But they’re business meetings, with the prerequisite (lengthy) agenda to tackle—all the minutiae that comes with taking a vision out of the clouds into the realm of reality. Big stuff! I often come home from those meetings feeling overwhelmed. I’m a global thinker. Breaking the big picture down into all the details makes me squirm—makes me feel as if there’s no possible way all those puzzle pieces will ever come together to make up that perfect picture we have envisioned. Thank God for engineers and sensory types and left-brained people who, unlike me, have a gift for patiently working with those little pieces until the picture emerges!

Getting back to our dinner date with two other Safe Haven couples. This was more familiar territory for me—the territory of relationships. We talked, for two hours, about our sons and daughters. We shared memories of their childhoods. Nothing bonds like swapping stories of years of sleepless nights, dads sleeping on the floor of their son or daughter’s bedroom to keep them from midnight wanderings through the house. Of having felt, during those early years, as if you and your child were always out of step with the rest of the world. We talked about the difficulties of letting go—how do we take away all that is familiar to these adult children to whom change is so very difficult? How do we tell loyal and loving support staff that we’re leaving their agency? Are we “stealing” them if we ask them to switch over to the agency that Safe Haven has chosen? How do we plan the upcoming transition to best suit our child’s unique personality?

As dinner progressed, the conversation gently veered away from the past and the present toward future possibilities. Talking about our own experiences of leaving home, and the experiences of our other children, we reminded ourselves that change always brings possibility. What doors might this move open up for our children? What gifts, hidden deep within themselves, might they uncover? What new friend will introduce an activity that they’ve never tried before, and in the trying, find they enjoy? What formerly yucky food—now grown in their very own garden—will suddenly be pronounced yummy? What new signs of maturity are in store, once those apron strings are untied?

And what possibilities are in store for us, as couples? As individuals? So much time and energy has been given to these very special children. What new endeavors will that time and energy be turned toward?

This conversation was exactly what I needed. Like this beam of sunlight, slanting in through my living room window as I write, it buoyed my mood, illuminated hope, brought to the surface the inner knowledge that anything is possible for those who love God and are called according to His purposes.

“I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29: 11

Truly, anything is possible! So, bring it on, Safe Haven Farms! We’re ready!