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I walked into the house and dumped my stuff. Making my way to the kitchen, I felt something odd in the air. Intangible. Hard to pinpoint. But it was there. Or it wasn't?

There were no glasses on the counter. Opening the freezer door, I saw Hot Pockets still fully stacked within. I made my way to the stairs where I found no sandals, no shoes, no books, no billfold, no car keys and no "Call me! —Love, Mom" notes.

I climbed the stairs and turned right at the top, entering the bedroom. I knew instantly what I was feeling: change. To be more specific and annoyingly accurate: loss. My grown son, Ethan, was gone. Well, duh. I'd just returned from Florida where I'd helped him set up an apartment. Flatware. Dishes. Pots and pans. Toilet paper. And Hot Pockets in his freezer.

He didn't live in my home anymore. He lived in his. A new "something" had moved into my days: my son's absence.

Ethan had announced to his father and me his new plan to venture out on his own. He wanted to move from Colorado to Florida. To go to school. To be closer to his girlfriend. To be on his own. After processing it, both Evan and I realized the "goodness" of his choice. We listened, learned and embraced his idea of a new beginning.

And then the day came for him to go. He stuffed an air mattress into a duffle bag, coaxed his new puppy into her pet crate and flew off to Florida. The plan was that I'd go down a few weeks later to help settle him and that we'd ship his bedroom and hand-me-down stuff once he had an address.

And so when I returned from Florida, I hadn't expected to be greeted by this strange absence. But there it was because he wasn't.

It's funny how something so normal can feel so abnormal. How something planned for can feel unexpected. How something I'd longed for can feel so completely unwanted.

I'd actually been in this spot before. Well, not exactly. Sleepovers where my child had been gone for a whole night. Summer camp when my children evacuated their rooms for weeks at a time. And just recently, Eva had married, leaving for good and taking my 3-year-old grandson, Marcus, with her from our nest. In each successive leaving came a new understanding of launching and its necessary loss.

I took a step "back" and looked at my house again, gradually realigned to the odd-angled new reality. No, there was "nothing" in Ethan's room, "nothing" on the counter or on the stairs. And no one had eaten the Hot Pockets. But "something" new stirred in my heart that felt surprisingly like love, joy and freedom.

Change and growth are a part of our lives, providing new experiences to be embraced again and again, though never the same. Perspective is the guide God provides for us through these changes, assuring us that yes, we will eventually come to know the "new normal" of their presence, even when it means embracing the absence in which the new is formed. "Behold, the former things have come to pass, now I declare new things; … " Isaiah 42:9 (NASB)

Elisa Morgan, CEO, MOPS International

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