Adult children are a miracle

We all gaze with wonder at the miracle of  a newborn.    I pause to reflect on the miracle of adult children.    One can recognize the threads of hereditary family traits, shadows of

the growing-up years, and shared values, yet the whole is ever so much more than the sum of the familiar parts.    The remarkable  people with whom they have chosen to share their lives, their varied life experiences, what they have learned from the inevitable crises of things that go wrong. . .who are these people who grace my household?     They manage the chaos and cares of raising the next generation, replete with problems  of which we could never have dreamed.   They carry out careers with dimensions we find hard to understand.    They make surprising decisions which their father and mother would never have made - and the results seem to work out quite well.  Adult children are truly a miracle.

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.     Kahlil Gibran