“And He shall be the stability of your times…” Isaiah 33:6

We took our youngest to college last week. The looming empty nest is now under foot and a reality to be walked in rather than something to dread. People kept asking if I was ready. How can anyone be ready for what they don’t know?

We were accustomed to a social calendar automatically filled with weekend events and our sons’ friends in and out of the house. Our lives no longer revolve around school activities and sports.

We live away from family, so when our immediate family is not here there’s no family here. Life seems to keep cycling back around to where we were before, back to pre-kid days when close friends became family.

And was the house this quiet before children? An unsettled feeling hangs in the air. I’m reminded of something my mother-in-law used to say: Life is about change and those who adjust to it do the best.

For followers of Christ there is stability through all life’s changes. He was my stability through years of infertility and failed adoptions when we were trying to fill the nest, through a couple decades of the nest spilling over with boys and bandaids, and now, in the once again quiet nest.

He is forever faithful. He has provided good things for me to do and there is hope for my future. I move forward with Him. The winds might howl and these bones might rattle and shake in a nest left empty, but he is my stability.

“For I know the plans I have for you…plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me…” Psalm 138:8