Letting Go
When you look back, parenting feels like a long series of letting go of your 
child. The first day of school is a day of pride and tears for parents. As the years go by, your child starts to take bigger, more serious steps away: getting a driver’s license, starting to date, working a summer job. Leaving for college feels like the last nail in the coffin when you finally say that last good bye, give that last hug and wipe that last tear away.
Even when they come home for vacation, their lives are not at home, but with their friends and activities at college. Every one of these acts of letting go are a normal part of a child’s growth and maturation. These milestones are happy but bittersweet for a parent.
It can take years to realize that your child is not your own, they are given to you for only a short time. It just doesn’t feel like that when you are up to your ears in diapers and Lego’s trying to get through the afternoon.
Control
At birth, you start with being responsible for meeting their every need: physical, emotional, psychological. Between birth and age 5, parenting is exhausting, but you can pretty much direct their lives, their friends and their activities. Once they take those first steps away: going off to school, choosing their own friends, you come to the realization that you can’t control every part of their lives. With every passing year, the stakes only get higher as they take bigger steps away until one day you realize: they are not yours to hold onto forever.
They have been given to you to nurture, love, educate until you send them on their way. This is a difficult realization for any parent and can be much harder for some parents than others. Thankfully, the Father has designed this so that we have to learn to let go little by little over many years. Eventually, you realize, it takes a lot more love to let go than to hold on.
Are you worried that if your son becomes a priest, he”ll miss out on all the joys of being a parent? Below is an exert from a post by a Catholic mom on Ignitum Today who addresses this very question.
Celibates Make Great Parents 6/02/2014
by Lauren Meyers
There are a few things that I do every day. I brush my teeth. I drink a cup, of coffee… and I kiss and pinch the cheeks of my two sons. As most parents would testify, I love my children. I love their laughs, their hugs. I love seeing them learn and watching them grow. I cherish every day with them, and I wonder how I ever lived without them. I want to take them in my arms and never let them go.
It’s times when I think about this joy that I wonder about those priests, religious, and other members of the Church who have taken a vow of celibacy. I don’t mean to make assumptions or to judge, but I wonder if it’s lonely. I wonder if they feel regret. I wonder if they feel that they are missing out by not being parents.
I get my answer when my four-year-old son opens up a new toy from his grandparents. He immediately says, “I need to show Father Kevin!” His first desire is to share the pride and joy of his new dinosaur with our parish priest. I get my answer when we are at the mall. My two-year-old sees a sister in a habit and, without ever having seen her, yells out, “Mary!” He is instantly comfortable and happy in her presence, and smiles as he reaches out his hands to her. I get my answer when another parish priest wags a finger with a smile and reminds my son not to run near the front steps of the rectory. He returns the smile and walks back to the vestibule.
I get my answer: They are parents. That’s not to say that they are parents in the same way that a man or woman who changes diapers in the middle of the night, packs lunch boxes, or spends countless hours driving to practices and recitals is a parent. These men and women, though, love immensely. They nurture, teach, and admonish. They pray for and provide guidance for countless children, youth, and adults. They care for others in any way that is needed. They are called to love in ways that are motherly and fatherly. Just like any parent, their presence is irreplaceable.
Those who are called to celibacy are not exempt from parenthood, and in some ways make the greatest parents. They are, perhaps, best equipped to be parents because they are conscious of a fact that I know I overlook all the time:
My children are not my own. My children do not exist for the sake of my personal fulfillment. Their lives are not meant to serve my own desires. My call as a parent is to protect and nurture a soul which belongs to God, so that soul might remain in the presence of God for all eternity. My vocation is to love immensely and to let go with trust.
Those who are celibate display true love and abandon. They love and are loved by God so dearly, and have abandoned themselves with complete trust in God’s will. Who better to help me return my children to God than those who have given themselves to God in such an intense way? Who better to remind me of my call to love with abandon and to return to the Lord every gift I have been given, including my children? I hope, in my life, to express true gratitude for those celibates who have vowed to love all the sons and daughters of the Church as their mothers and fathers. I hope to learn from them how to be a great parent.
Please know the authors on this blog pray daily for parents of discerning sons and daughters to find understanding and peace.
Seminarian Parents 