Parent Reflects on Challenge of "Launching" Grown Sons

This morning, I was up early meditating and preparing to teach a Sunday school lesson when the music came wafting into my eardrums from a distant bedroom. My youngest son was up and on the computer. The sounds from his room were the bomb that blew up my quiet time. While I started meditating on the annoying lack of solitude, it hit me:

"A family that prays together stays together."

I was then taken back to the days when all three of our sons were in high school. Every week day morning before they went out to the bus stop, my husband and I would huddle them into a circle with us, and we would pray together. As I listened to the sounds of one grown son disturbing my private time, and reflected on the other grown son whose room is so messy it will take a week to clean, it dawned on me and made me chuckle.

A family that prays together stays together: Is that why the two are still here?

To be fair to my sons, they did leave to go to college. When they both graduated last May, they came home, just for the summer they said. Is it my imagination, or is it winter now?

My oldest did the same thing. He went off to college after high school graduation. For the next two years, he was in and out of our house. There was a period of three months when there was nobody in the house but hubby and me. It was wonderful. Now I can't remember or imagine what it would be like to be Empty Nesters again.

Back to the cliché. The family that prays together, stays together. Even when the children are grown, it looks like the family stays together. Young parents dream of seeing their children grow up, go to college, get the degree, get the career, get the APARTMENT, then the house and family of their own. The dream dies every time one or more of their offspring return with a suitcase or two in their grip. With the economy the way it is, it gets harder to stay in college or keep pace with the cost of living.

I must say that I enjoy having the two sons here. There's a lot of laughter in my home. Yes, I enjoy their liveliness, maybe not at five o'clock in the morning, when I'm in search of alone time.

My question is, for families praying together and staying together. . .will the children ever leave?