Enjoying every minute

My firstborn is graduating from Highschool!  This has been a year of many 1st for Olivia.  She is just shocked that she is graduating, she has been learning how to drive this year, filled out her first application for a real job, and is turning 18 years old!  All this has come together the past few months and is coming to fruition next week!  It is overwhelming for her and me as well.  Although, I can't say I feel overwhelmed but just an immense amount of gratitude to God for guiding and leading her all these years.

Am I proud of her?  Of course I am!  She has made some very good choices and still looks to her parents for advice, for which I am grateful.  I'm grateful I still have a "say" in her life and yet she is becoming more and more independent.  It's still nice to know, though, that she wants our approval and will ask us for our opinions about her options for her future.

I find myself realizing that she is not an outcome of our great parenting but of God's hand upon her.  Oh, I'd like to think I had a huge part in the beautiful person she is, but really, I know my weaknesses and my faults are glaring at me on a daily basis.  I fight constantly with my flesh and can say that I don't always model Jesus in our home.  In fact, some weeks I rarely model Jesus at all!  So really, God has blessed us with a daughter who desires to serve Him.  When I look back over her life thus far, I can see how He has had his hands all over her life teaching her of himself through many different people along the way.

So her graduation will not be a ceremony to flaunt her accomplishments.  Her success is not from human hands.  It is all God.  So it will be a celebration of what God has done in her, through her, and for her.  This is what's so nice about planning your own graduation.  Instead of focusing on the graduate, you can focus on Him who takes our mistakes and makes them wonderful! I'm enjoying every minute of it.