Weaning is no fun! Or is it!

A year ago, I was putting six books a day into the hall outside my office, with a two-fold goal: to take fewer boxes home and to pass on books to those who were at the other end of their professional careers.  Those next few weeks flew by, and suddenly I was home, boxes piled around me, and no place to go. 

You’d think it would have been fun, sleeping in, books to read, sit in the sun!!!  But I was miserable!  For over thirty years, everyday, I would wake up, dress up and head up and out to school, surrounding myself with young people to teach and mentor.  I had been a teacher, a professor, an administrator, and now what?

After several weeks of self-pity, I got excited.  I was to teach two online classes, a monthly counseling class and writing classes at the library.  The fall flew by ,and it was so much fun.

Then spring came, and no online classes, but an on -campus class along with the other classes, and it was still fun…less intensive, because online classes are intensive, but I began to have a sense of being weaned. Last week, we had a final celebration of my library writing classes, made better because they want to do it again. But I did look at the calendar and realized, like last year, it would all be over in a few weeks.  Then what?

A new door opened; I was invited to teach a couple of workshops at a writers’ conference this summer, and it came to me, the kindness of God. Last night I woke up, and discovered I was rehearsing Scripture that I had memorized, and I can still remember whispering this verse in the darkness, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”


God is weaning me from the familiar, and He has been doing it with such kindness this last year…allowing me to continue teaching a little and writing a little.  And like the infant who is weaned from the bottle or breast, who discovers the freedom a glass of milk gives, I am discovering the freedom and joy of this new life.  Yeah, I know I am a slow learner, that I am just getting it now.

BUT, I wonder if the lesson isn’t the same for all of us.  We all face periods of life when we are weaned from the familiar to walk a new path.  Sometimes the new path looks scary, and from experience, the more we look back, the scarier the looking ahead gets. But God never changes; He loves us and He never forces us to walk a path that He has not cleared for us. And He never asks us to walk that path alone.