My oldest daughter graduates from high school on Friday. This event has been looming in my my mind all year. It’ll hit at strange times, making me tear up, worry, and rejoice. It’s momentous, Graduation. It is both an ending and a beginning, a time to rejoice and a  time to mourn.

As a mom, graduation marks the end of an era. I have been, quite literally, very close to my kids all their lives: I stayed at home until they went to school, and then I went to school with them, teaching at K-12 Christian schools, where my classroom was on the same campus as theirs. It’s an end of an era for my kids, too – all three have been at the same schools all their lives, through all our moves. My younger two don’t know a world without Emma in it everyday.

That ends Friday. When Emma walks across the stage and receives her diploma, she steps out into the world – a world where I am not down the hall, where her siblings aren’t in her daily business. In August, she will be going away to college – 6 hours away. And, while I know she is a great kid and she is ready to leave the “nest”, I still grieve over that fact. I will miss her! We all will.

But then I think of something my mother-in-law used to say. Judy McGee was a godly woman who grieved the fact that all four of her kids lived far from her and her husband. Every time a visit came to an end, Judy would pull out her tissues and cry. She loved her family deeply. But then she’d remind us all, “One day, we’ll live together for eternity,” she’d say. “These momentary separations will seem like nothing compared to that.”

Judy is waiting for us there, experiencing the joy of that “forever togetherness” she always longed for. As I pull out my tissues and cry, preparing myself for this first high school graduation, knowing the other two will follow closely behind, I am reminded that all of this life is temporary. The moments – good and bad, painful and joyful – are fleeting. I am reminded to never lose focus on the eternal. I was created, not to live bound by time for however many years God gives me on this earth, but to live outside of time, to “graduate” to an eternity more amazing and fulfilling than I can possibly imagine.