My daughter is 17 today. She got her drivers license (the real one with the REAL ID), her first sew in hair style (she had a whole issue cuz she swore the curls were old lady curls— GEN Z), and is currently driving us to Memphis.

Meanwhile. My husband is nearly shitting bricks because she is driving, okay? Granted, she is driving us through Arkansas where the speed limit is a smoove 75 for cars and 70 for trucks which means everybody is taking that as a suggestion of that being the minimum and not maximum but she gotta learn, right? And she and her youngest sister is dang near telepathic—which means if you’re not paying attention, you will mistake the actions and tone of one for the other as they become entangled in speech and process. My husband, (already super cautious and barky because he is so much older than I and certainly than they are) has found every reason he can think of to nitpick every little move they make—or don’t—to intensify the seriousness and severity of whatever he deemed important in that moment. He has already threatened everybody in the car multiple times about things that are normal car behavior, normal teen behavior, and normal highway behavior.

It’s always a precarious place to be, between him and his distress at all things teenager and them and their commitment to being…well…teenagers.

I love them all quite a lot and also. I’m almost ready for them all to leave me alone. Completely and totally. Like with all the finality of the cross of Christ: IT IS FINISHED.

Almost.

See the honest truth is that love is complicated. You almost be ready to die for folks while also almost being ready to kill ‘em ya own self.

I really have a greater appreciation for this having finally made my way through the first five books of the Old Testament because MY GOODNESS. Adonai stayed on the fence about His people. 😂😂😂 He was fighting for them and murking them at the same time at one point.

Cuz loving us humans be a lot. And that is honest.