The Last Pickup

I used to despise the school pickup line.

Somehow, I always seemed to wind up in the slow lane, and it was a daily torturous test of patience, endurance, and multitasking.

But now?

I miss it like crazy.

Mostly because I never really had the chance to properly bid it farewell.

When my oldest daughter got her driver's license, there was exactly one year when she drove herself and her younger sister to and from school each day.

It was like a dream.

So much extra time.

And, even better, so much less frustration.

Once she graduated and left for college, I knew my duty would resume.

But only for another year and a half.

Then my youngest would be able to drive, too.

I would finally be free, once and for all, of the dreaded pickup line.

I could see the end in sight.

And I practically salivated for it.

Then came March 2020.

I picked up my daughter on a Friday afternoon, and it was just like any other day.

Or so I thought.

The slow-moving lines.

The lost time.

The ravenous child with the insatiable Chick-fil-A habit.

The usual.

The next day, we received a message that school would be closed for a week.

As we all know now, it lasted considerably longer than that.

And by the time the doors reopened, my youngest had her driver's license.

Just like that, I finally got what I'd been asking for all along.

I was free.

That season was over.

And I was glad to see it go.

Except now both of my girls have graduated from college and moved on with their lives.

And I often find myself reminiscing fondly about those years.

School pickup line and all.

Had I known that Friday would be the last time I ever picked up one of my children from school, I'd have treated it a little differently.

I thought I had another couple of months to sigh and complain.

Instead, it ended in the blink of an eye.

No fanfare.

No wistful goodbye.

No savoring the moment as I cleared that parking lot for the last time.

It just ended.

And that experience taught me something I've thought about many times since.

We tend to assume the way things are now is the way they'll continue to be.

Both the good and the bad.

But that's rarely true.

Life happens in seasons.

Business does, too.

There are seasons when there's more work than time to do it.

Seasons when the phone doesn't ring nearly enough.

Seasons when we're doing everything ourselves and can't wait until someone else can take a few things off our plate.

Seasons when we're building.

Seasons when we're maintaining.

Seasons when we're changing direction entirely.

And when we're in the middle of one, it's easy to evaluate it primarily by what it's demanding from us.

The long hours.

The uncertainty.

The frustration.

The responsibility.

Those things are real.

I really did hate that pickup line.

But what I couldn't see at the time was everything that came bundled with it.

A daughter who still needed a ride home.

An ordinary afternoon together.

A stop at Chick-fil-A.

A season of my life that was quietly moving toward its end whether I noticed it or not.

I don't think the lesson is that we should try to hold on to every season.

Some seasons are supposed to end.

And sometimes we're more than ready for them to.

My daughters were supposed to grow up.

They were supposed to learn to drive.

They were supposed to graduate from college and build lives of their own.

And I wouldn't trade who they are now for one more trip through that pickup line.

But I do wish I'd understood something then that I understand now.

We don't have to want a season to last forever to recognize that something about it is worth noticing while we're there.

Because endings don't always announce themselves.

Sometimes there isn't a countdown.

Sometimes nobody tells us this is the last one.

Sometimes it's just an ordinary Friday afternoon.

And then the season changes.