Children are a gift. I know, someone out there just let out a big old, "Duh!" But let me press on anyhow. You see, children are a gift that come with many, many strings attached. Perhaps the worst part as parents is knowing when to snip those strings so that the child can be on their own, but more about that later.
Recently, two people that my wife knows, one from her work and one I also knew years ago, lost children. The one family lost a teenager in a car crash. The other family lost a newborn who had too many health problems to survive. Both of those children were gifts. The gifts were given for a limited amount of time, certainly less time than any parent wishes for. Those children packed a lifetime into a few years and a few moments, respectively. My heart goes out (and breaks) for both families, even while I think about my own son that is still with us, doing well, and galloping towards adulthood.
And that fact, that my son is halfway through high school, is what really made me realize what a gift children are. I know that in a couple of more years that my son will start snipping the strings that keep him attached to my wife and I. We will do our share of snipping as the parents (at least we should), but he will ultimately decide when he is ready to be on his own and snip most of the strings. Our job is to make sure that this wonderful gift that we have been given grows up to be a gift for the world, not just us. In both families that I mentioned above, the children were organ donors and gave the gift of continued life to others. In dying much too young, those children were a gift to the world.
Perhaps it is the cruelest irony that some of us are given the gift of children only to realize that some gifts are not meant to be kept as close as we would like. Some gifts are truly meant to be ours for only a brief time. Parents do the hard work of working with the gift (child) and preparing it for others. But sooner or later, we do have to let go. Letting go is the only way to see how magnificent a gift our children are and can become for others.