Every bridge has a beginning.
Mine wasn’t over a river.
It was in my driveway.
My son had just finished packing his car after college. Every corner was filled with boxes, books, and the hopes of a young man ready to begin his own life thousands of miles away.
We hugged.
He smiled.
Then he opened the car door.
For a brief moment, everything stood still.
The summer air.
The quiet of the driveway.
The life we had known.
I remember thinking that love was changing right in front of me.
For years, loving him had meant helping, guiding, protecting, welcoming him home.
Now love was asking something entirely different of me.
It was asking me to let him go.
Not because I loved him less.
But because I loved him enough to want the life God was calling him toward—even if it took him far from me.
A thought came quietly into my heart.
If I cling to him, he might stay.
But he will not become who he is meant to be.
As he drove away, I didn’t feel as though I had lost a son.
I felt as though I had been invited into a new way of loving.
One I had never practiced before.
Looking back, I think many of life’s most important transitions begin this way.
Not with certainty.
Not with a plan.
But with love discovering a new form.
Throughout August, I’d like to share stories from these kinds of bridges—the places where what has been meets what is still becoming.
They won’t all be stories about families.
Some will come from the women and men religious I have had the privilege of accompanying. Others will come from leadership, faith, friendship, or ordinary moments that quietly changed the way I see the world.
I have a feeling there is wisdom waiting in one another’s stories.
How does love know when it is time to change its form?