Welcome to Kindergarten

As if transitioning to being a cribless house wasn’t enough of a change in our household. This postcard arrived in the mail yesterday. I have to admit that I teared up a little bit reading the note from our five-year-old’s teacher welcoming him to Kindergarten.

It’s always strange to me when you know something big is coming, a marker, a milestone, and then it catches you off guard. I’ve known for a year we were headed to Kindergarten this fall. We went on a tour. We enrolled. All steps indicating that we getting closer and closer and yet when this postcard arrive in the mail yesterday my mind was surprised. “Oh my goodness, he’s going to Kindergarten!”

Even as we prepare for milestones like this one, we come to points that stop us in our tracks reminding us that time is fleeting and that things grow and change. This summer more than once, I have come downstairs in the morning to find our five-year-old fixing his own breakfast and sometimes even his sister’s breakfast. These little acts of independence are signaling a new stage of parenting and life for him.

It’s easy to miss these milestones as we rush from one thing to another. It’s easy to gloss over these little acts of growing and changing in the midst of our hustle.

But if we slow down and take time to check the mail or marvel at a child pouring cereal, we might just get a glimpse of the way life is miraculous and transcends time and space for just these brief moments. And it’s in these seemingly routine moments that we catch the Divine moving around us.