I haven’t written about this because, honestly, I needed it to be mine for a while. I needed to process it, pray about it, and see if it shifted or changed.

A few weeks ago, my youngest walked across the stage and into his last long student break with us before leaving home for good. Soon after we cheered and celebrated him at Clemson, the anticipation of him fully leaving the nest hit, leaving me unsettled and resistant to what’s looming.

Now, as these weeks dwindle to a few more days, that feeling has grown. In my stomach and chest. In my heart. I find myself fighting tears and feeling like such a wuss. Afterall, this is how it’s supposed to go.

But it's interesting what happens when we sit with our feelings, head and heart working them over, letting them be, when we lift them to a higher place and see what we hear back.

And after doing that, I am sure of this:

These feelings about change and missing him, sadness, and resisting are all about me. When I think about Jason instead, all of that shifts. It reminds me that we are called to a higher love. Bigger love. The kind of love that, while acknowledging my own loss, is more caught up in his exciting adventure than in myself.

And exciting it is. He will soon set off to see the world on a three-month trip he has worked and saved for, planned and eagerly anticipated. As I stand beside him, and later behind him as he goes, as I think about him and not myself, I am filled with excitement and pride. That's there, too, right next to the messy feelings.

In that mix, I know that higher love puts other before self. Higher love says your gain is more important to me than my loss. And it is. It absolutely is.