Empty Nest-obia (Not Empty Nest-opia)
Guest Feature by Megan Dunham
This Week
Intro: This week’s guest author
Hot Takes: New study out on loneliness; Britney Spears’ sad captivity
Feature: “Empty Nest-obia (Not Empty Nest-opia)”
Posterity: “Camping with the Prophetesses”
Peaches’ Picks: Check back next week after the fireworks are spent
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Dear Reader,
At least once early in each week, I find myself asking Megan, “Any newsletter ideas for me?” Normally, the question is met with silence - not an intentionally evasive one, but more of a shared pondering kind. After a few minutes, ending with me usually asking again, Megan will shrug her shoulders, shake her head, and say, “I don’t know. What are you thinking?”
This week’s version of the exchange, however, was different; the question was the same, but the answer was immediate and direct: “I think you should write about us almost being empty nesters and not wanting that to be the case.” As her words came out, so did a few tears, the immediacy of which let me know she’s been thinking and feeling and lamenting this of late.
Because I’m sensitive like that.
So, I asked Megan if she’d write the feature article for this week’s Second Drafts. She thankfully agreed, and I think you’ll enjoy hearing from her, as she is ten times the writer I am.
As always, thanks for reading,
Craig
P.S.: Comments are open below if you’d like to leave yours. You’re also welcome to email me directly with feedback, ideas, links, etc. at cmdunham [at] gmail [dot] com.
Hot Takes
“The Politics of Loneliness is Totalitarian” - This is not good news for anyone:
“Friendlessness is on the rise — and so, one must presume, is loneliness. That's the troubling takeaway from a study released last week by the Survey Center on American Life that shows the number of both men and women who claim to have ‘no close friends’ increasing five-fold over the past 30 years. For men, the rate of friendlessness has gone from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2021, and for women from 2 percent to 10 percent today. The pattern is the same on the high end, with the percentage of men saying they have 10 or more friends dropping from 40 to 15 percent and the percentage of women saying the same falling from 28 to 11 percent.”
Loneliness rarely leads people to good places. Pastors will tell you this about people in their churches; so will FBI profilers on the investigative end of a mass shooting. The principle is simple: as God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Marriage is a solution, but not the only one. People - even those of us of a more introverted kind - need others. Here’s what’s working against us:
“The fact that friendlessness is on the rise seems to be a function, in part, of the wasting away of these intermediary institutions in civil society. Families are smaller than they used to be, and fewer people marry in the first place. Communities are fraying under economic pressures and as a result of social shifts. Fewer people go to church. Work more often involves analysis of symbols (ideas and numbers) and takes place mostly within our own heads, mediated by technology, with remote work also becoming more common in recent years. Unions are a shadow of what they once were. We've been bowling alone for decades.”
Do yourself and someone else a favor this weekend: make eye contact, say hello.
Friendship is facing a crisis. “Judge Denies Britney Spears’ Request to Remove Father From Conservatorship Again” - I can’t say I even knew about Britney Spears’ conservator arrangement dating back to 2008, but reading the little I have about it now, I keep waiting for some adult other than her father to step in and say enough. This is crazy:
“Spears’ father has been her co-conservator since 2008, when the singer suffered a very public breakdown. He became sole conservator in 2019 after attorney Andrew Wallet resigned from co-conservatorship. In September 2019, he temporarily relinquished his powers and Jodi Montgomery became the conservator of her person, meaning she is responsible for Spears’ medical and personal well-being. Spears’ father remains the sole conservator of her estate, managing all of her finances — while making a hefty sum of of her annual multi-million dollar earnings, given that Spears has continued to record music and perform regularly at her residence in Las Vegas, while under her restrictive conservatorship.”
This excellent article from Evie Magazine points out that, in addition to the financial implications, Spears’ desire for children is being controlled as well:
“Spears revealed that she still dreams of getting married and having a baby: ‘I would like to progressively move forward and I want to have the real deal, I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship, I’m not able to get married or have a baby. I have an IUD inside of myself right now so I don’t get pregnant. I wanted to take the IUD out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won’t let me go to the doctor to take it out because they don’t want me to have children — any more children. So basically, this conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good.’”
As the article points out, this is essentially forced sterilization. I’m not a fan.
#FreeBritney
Britney Spears is trying to get control of all aspects of her life back and should be given a chance to do just that.
Empty Nest-obia (Not Empty Nest-opia)
“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots around your table.”
Psalm 128:3
I always wanted to be a so-called “stay-at-home mom.” In my imagined world, I would marry a Baptist pastor, wear 1988-esque jumpers for the rest of eternity, and spend the bulk of my primary years having babies and caring for them.
For the most part (minus the Baptist pastor and denim jumper action), that happened. Craig and I married when I was 23, and then two years later, we started our family - Maddie, Chloe, Katie, and Millie - all born while I was between the ages of 25-29.
People shook their heads at us in sympathy or judgment (I never really knew which), not realizing that we actually wanted all of these children and wanted to have them so close together. Sure, it wasn’t easy, and I’ve perhaps since romanticized those years (going grocery shopping with four kids five and under was never an enjoyable task), but it was what it was. I started homeschooling Maddie, our oldest, for pre-school while living in Colorado Springs and we were off and running.
Then Craig decided to go to seminary in St. Louis.
Sacrificing the Struggle
Seminary didn’t change our goals in life; if anything, it solidified them. We’d always tried to be people who loved God and others well, and seminary seemed the next step in learning to do just that by better forming who we were and what we believed about God and people. Still, on the heels of having lived 12 very formative years in Colorado Springs with many close friends and on staff with The Navigators, moving to St. Louis was going to be…different.
Not to be thwarted by a new situation I hadn’t planned for, I continued homeschooling in our little campus apartment. I was also taken by the seminary’s generous offer to give spouses of full-time students free tuition, so I made a good attempt at getting a master’s degree. Unfortunately, seven months of non-stop graduate coursework while homeschooling four girls (then between seven and two) was more than I could manage. I let that goal go for the sake of what I considered my primary calling.
While I’m sure I look back on the girls’ mid-elementary years through rose-colored glasses, there were some big struggles with one of my daughters that raised big questions as to my commitment to homeschooling her. I had read the books and blogs about how every kid could and should be homeschooled, and I had bought into that idea. But then I realized I was on the cusp of sacrificing my long-term relationship with my daughter on the altar of homeschooling and I was not willing to do that. At the end of summer, we enrolled our two oldest in a local Christian school.
A little piece of me died the day that I dropped the girls off at school, as if I was now somewhat less of a mom for failing to see their education through to the very end. But then I discovered that at home, I could still be a pretty darn good homeschool mom to my two youngest girls, so I learned that needing a little help was okay.
Until Craig, who had finished seminary and taught four years at a Christian high school, took a headmaster position at a classical Christian school in Oklahoma.
Blending In
Again, my expectations of being a stay-at-home mom shifted as we enrolled all four girls in the new school. Being a “blended model” school, the girls attended part-time during the week and I still taught them at home part-time, so the transition was a teensy bit easier on my heart. But it was still another death of my long-held dream of being in total control of their education, as now another entity (granted, led by my husband) selected all aspects of the curriculum and co-taught all four girls with us.
I settled into our life there by being fully present on the girls’ home days, and even started doing some freelance writing on the two days each week I had “free” for the first time since December 1998. We also embarked on a new calling to foster children between the ages of 0-5, fostering 14 children over the course of two years and having our hearts repeatedly broken every single time we were asked to give them back.
Interestingly, of all our parenting campaigns, foster care may have been the most developmental and beneficial for each of our girls. But that’s another newsletter.
Why? Because four years later, life changed again and we moved to Bozeman.
Full-Time
This time, Craig was to lead a five-day-a-week school, so we enrolled all four girls (now 17 through 12), and for the first time since Maddie was born, I wasn’t caring for kids at home full-time. Also for the first time, our new town and its high cost of living required me to find employment to help us afford a place to live.
What this meant was that, while Craig and the girls went to school together each day, I went to a different location and job. Don’t get me wrong: I was grateful for the organization and the opportunity to help people in need, but it was all new on so many levels, especially the part of seeing all my family go together in one direction each morning while I went solo in another.
Of course, life does not go the way you think it will. But, just because the path changes doesn’t mean your calling does - I was still called to be Craig’s wife; I was still called to be “Mom” to Maddie, Chloe, Katie, and Millie. If anything, the changes reaffirmed my calling even more.
Halfway through Craig’s time of employment at the new school, I had the opportunity to apply for the role of teaching first grade where my family was. And for one sweet year, all the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit together as well as they ever had: Maddie was starting college at Montana State University in town, living the first year at home; the other five of us were in the same place each day working toward similar goals.
But that year was probably part of how we got to my “empty nest-obia” - not “empty nest-opia”; that is, my phobia of the girls leaving once and for all, never to return.
Raising Adults, Not Children
When I think about the fact that all six of us are still in the same town and living in three different places, the rational part of my brain (and I do have one) screams, “You don’t get to complain.” After all, when Maddie first moved out on her own that summer after her first year at college, she moved all of three blocks down the street. We could literally walk over and sit on her patio any time we wanted to (and we did), but I still cried sometimes on the short walk back.
Six short months after Maddie moved out, she married her high school sweetheart. We love Bruce and are grateful for him; I just never dreamed Maddie would be married at 19 (not that either Craig or I had a problem with it). While I don’t think I ever expected her to move back in with us once she made the decision to move out, if you’re single, scraping by, and still in your late teens/early twenties, there’s probably more of a chance it might happen. My mom heart could always hope.
When Chloe moved out on her own (after also starting college at Montana State and living her first year at home), she was just a mile away, and though the parking at her apartment was horrible, we could also see her whenever we wanted. She’s since moved even closer and drops in regularly (as does Maddie), but even with much better parking at her new place, I still find myself tearing up occasionally that she’s on her own.
When I scripted out my cute little homeschooling Christian life back in the early 2000s, the mistake I made was I failed to see it to its logical (and biblical) conclusion. As Craig always reminds me, we aren’t raising children; we’re raising adults. If our girls don’t eventually move on into their adult lives, we won’t have done well by them; the dream that would have been fulfilled will only have been mine, not theirs.
Intellectually, I get this, but while it’s not loving to cry every time I say goodbye to my daughters, I’m finding the transition we’ve begun and are only a few short years away from completing is turning out to be the hardest one of all. While he jokes to the contrary, neither Craig nor I have ever been the parent who says, “So glad they’re outta here.” On the contrary, I have no bone in my being that ever compels me to say that; instead, I find myself praying wordless groans that translate, “I wish they were here.”
Coming Reactions
Our third daughter, Katie, graduated from high school this year and has been serving as a counselor since the beginning of June at Eagle Lake Camp - the place where Craig and I met in 1993 and served for 10 years. This very morning at 11:35 a.m., Craig and I will drop off Millie, our fourth daughter and soon-to-be high school senior in September, at the airport to fly to Colorado Springs to join her sister as part of Eagle Lake’s work crew. (Because we believe in the virtue-shaping potential of camp experiences, Maddie and Chloe participated similarly at Eagle Lake a few years ago.)
Thus, as of today (and for the first time in 23 years), Craig and I are in for a sneak preview of the proverbial empty nest for five full weeks. I suppose it’s a mercy to get a practice run in before the real thing happens (and our two older girls in Bozeman may look in on us to make sure we haven’t driven each other up a wall), but I promise you that, come August, after we make the 20-hour roundtrip to pick up the younger girls at camp, I will bring them back to our tower here, where I will lock them up forever and make them grow their hair and sing weird Disney songs about their dilemma.
Or, we may just bring them home and enjoy them for the time we still have together under the same roof. After all, it will not be long before they, too, take off on their own (like her older sisters, Katie will attend Montana State while living at home her first year, and Millie will walk in their same high school footsteps, graduating next June).
As Craig and I have talked, when it comes time for everyone to have flown the coop, I don’t want to be the mom who sits around pining for what once was. I don’t want my daughters to feel uncomfortable coming home because of what it does to me. No, I want to grow in my now-new role as mom of adult kids and, should God be so generous, begin to develop the art of grandparenting with time and intention as well.
I don’t want the eventual sending of the last of my girls to be the death of a dream.
By God’s grace, I want it to be the fulfillment of one.
“Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.”
Psalm 90:16
Post(erity): “Camping with the Prophetesses”
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something (of course, you’re always welcome to search the archives yourself whenever you like).
This week’s Posterity post - “Camping with the Prophetesses” - comes from September 27, 2009. An excerpt:
“I feel like Philip the evangelist, who the Bible says in Acts 21:9, ‘had four unmarried daughters, who prophesied.’ My daughters are teaching me so much for which I'm too often only grudgingly grateful; I am embarrassed and humbled there is still more I need them to teach me…Whatever happened to the days when my children were simply cute and cuddly and not really aware how broken, immature, and needy their father was? And what's up with God actually using my children more in my life than me in theirs?”
Peaches’ Picks: Check Back Next Week
Though she loves America, Independence Day (and, more specifically, the fireworks that accompany its celebration) is Peaches’ least favorite holiday. She’s currently secluded herself in an undisclosed bunker for the weekend, but looks forward to being back next week with a book recommendation for her fans. Happy 245th, America!
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Loved Megan's article. You are truly blessed with these four girls and I can easily understand why it hurts to lose their daily companionship. Thanks for sharing!
Hi! First time commenter here... I gotta say...I'm completely with Megan on this. We have similarly aged children (adults?). My three (2 girls and then a boy, ages 21, 19, and 17, respectively) have all gone off to various camps to work this summer and my husband and I are left to our own devices with only each other's company (plus our mischievous dog). In 5 weeks, they will all return. A week later, the girls will go back to their college spaces not nearby and the boy will begin his senior year of high school. I completely concur with Megan's sentiments. I remember fondly (too fondly, most likely) the younger years and to be honest, I'm a little afraid of the future. It helps to have comrades who have already trod these shores and trust in the Lord who casts out fear. But I am left to process all this and figure out what my new family role will be. Thanks for putting this experience into words. Hang tight, Megan! I see you!
(Incidentally, we met one time at an RYM conference. You were such a delightful person and I was glad to meet you in real life!)