My oldest daughter Bethan showed me two pictures of the fleeting nature of time. In one she wears a baptismal gown surrounded by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. The other picture shows her in her graduation gown surrounded by the same women.   Her life at two poles, her gown in both denotes the entrance into a new life. One gown signifies her membership and incorporation into the body of Christ, the other suggests her emergence and entrance into her life apart from her parents—her life into the larger world.

As I got into the car with Bethan last Friday I knew I was taking her away from our home and leaving her in a relative world of strangers. Ole Miss, who does she know there? Who will look after her? Who will comfort her when she is lonely? Who will be there to bale her out of problems?   I know lots of folk there and they will help, but it is not the same.   I am losing control and it is uncomfortable. As she drove, all these thoughts were in my mind. I don't like this, yet this is what the past seventeen years have been about—Teri and I were made for this, this was our purpose, not our only purpose but one of our larger adventures. Seventeen years to take a human life and with God's grace and the help of a larger community to see Christ formed into her very fabric . And then to see her enter a larger world that is mostly indifferent to everything we have taught her about what it means to be a follower of Christ and what it means to be human. She is ready. She is eager; this is good, yet my heart hurts.

I helped get a vanload of stuff up to her room—her new home in Martin Dorm. I couldn't bear to stay; Anne Rachael and I drove around and explored what will be her world, her geography, and her place of spiritual, social, and intellectual formation. Anne Rachael looked around and said to me, “It will be forever before I am here.” I looked at her and told her, “No, baby, you have no idea how fast it will be.” Time does not fly to a nine-year-old like it does to those who have children and I thought about Bethan's pictures.

When we returned to her room, it was finished – furnished, decked and decorated. Yes, I thought, I could have picked out this place among a hundred rooms in the dorm and know this is where she would live. It was definitely Bethan—in stuff, in sensibilities and taste. We then took care of last-minute details, details I could still

do for her. I ran from place to place making sure everything I could do for her was done. It helped and I didn't think about the leave taking. When everything was done that could be done, the hour was getting late and we had to leave. I hugged her and I couldn't speak. All the things I had planned to say, escaped me, there was only the moment. I was lost for words, a parting “I love you so much” and I turned away. I looked back and saw the tears in her eyes and walked away. My councils were my own, Lori drove home, and I sat in silence in the back seat. This seemed like the hardest thing I have ever done.

Sunday morning, sitting in my study an hour before worship, the full impact of this hit me afresh and for the first time I really wept. I knew that during worship she would not be sitting on my left with her family helping her mother wrestle her younger brothers, Eliot and Patrick. I just didn't look at that side of the congregation for the entire service.

And yet the other side of this change is joy. I have raised her to have a living adventure with God, pure and simple. I have preached to her from day one that she would eventually be in the world and love it for the sake of the gospel. I have told her what Jeremiah told the Israelites exiled to Babylon—move in, get in the culture, settle down and pray for those around you. Do this and yet never forget who you are. Never forget that your identity, your reason for living and your greatest joy fall free from the God who formed you and gave himself for you. This is good; this is what I raised her to do. I love adventure and pray that she will engage this adventure with as much passion and abandonment humanly possible.   She was made for it.

When I turn to God with a heart of joy and sorrow our God identifies with my feelings and gives comfort. God sent his Son, his only Son, away also. Yet, in that sending, the Father knew his Son would be rejected, misunderstood, beaten and ultimately killed. He sent him with all the foreknowledge, and certainty and wisdom that only God can know. He knew full well what his lot would be. His only Son, who had dwelt in his bosom from all eternity with more rapturous love between them than I will ever know with my daughter—he sent him off into the far country. Yes, God knows and he says this is good. Life is like a parade, enjoy it as it passes by, but don't try to stop it or you'll be bitter from it. I take comfort in knowing that as our relationship grows and changes it will only get better.