What's it like, being in Japan without your kids?

Missionaries with younger kids are asking me: How does being here without kids feel?

A few different ways to describe it and I'm grappling for the best way. The most dramatic is to compare it to the grief of losing someone you love. You know they are in heaven and without pain. You’re happy for them, but still sad. You wouldn’t wish them back for anything. Like any metaphor this breaks down pretty quickly, but it does convey that there’s an emptiness in our lives, and it’s a matter of sitting with that and finding a way forward. They will always be part of our story, just not an everyday part. It's weird that we're meeting people now who have never known our sons, and often I feel compelled to bring them somehow into the conversation: they are part of who we are, they bring context to our lives.

Today I'm a little sad because its one of our son's birthdays. It's the first year that I won't celebrate with him in person. He's not a big one for parties, but we'd always have a cake and presents for a small family celebration. I'm not making a cake or wrapping presents today.

But if you think about it just a short while you realise that it is also sad if they don’t move on! It's a natural and expected change and when that doesn't happen it's a cause of grief too. A Japanese colleague pointed out to me that having them remain tiny and dependent is not what we want.

Parenting is all about sadness and happiness. Both emotions regularly occur at the same time from very early on: when a child begins eating food instead of drinking mum's milk, when they start school, have their first sleepover away from home, get their licence, finish school. All these evoke both sad and happy emotions for the parent. And often other emotions too like fear and pride.

And then there is expectations that we place on ourselves and our kids and that society places on us. When those expectations aren't met we run into emotional challenges too.

People working cross-culturally generally expect that their kids will move to another country after high school. Most of our expat peers here with adult children are living in a different countries to their kids. So in that sense it is normal.

Arggh, basically parenting is an emotional business, there's no way around it, not even not having kids.

On the positive side of things, it is wonderful watching our sons living life independently (even if we're doing it from a distance). There were many years when I wondered if they ever could learn to take showers (or go to bed) without us prompting them. But to be all taking care of their own basic needs (including feeding themselves) is nothing short of amazing, when I think about it. None of them have someone else cooking or housekeeping for them. None of them has someone else driving them around or keeping an eye on their schedule. That they are all functioning as independent adults is a source of great joy.

It must be said that there is less stress in not living in the same house as them: out of sight out of mind, is fairly true. It's not that we don't care and we don't think of and pray for them often, but we aren't spectators to their daily lives and so things that are stressors don't weigh us down like it would if we were closer. We are also not rubbing each other up the wrong way on a daily basis (living with someone on the autistic spectrum who also struggles with anxiety and misophonia isn't a walk in the park). I think we have more to give others as a result.

There's joy in doing (and eating) things that we could never do when they were here. Eating out has gotten more affordable, and so has eating in! We can be more spontaneous too. I still remember, as a young adult hearing that my parents has spontaneously gone out to the movies. It seemed quite out of character...but I only knew them as people who had children at home and they were discovering who they were without that responsibility.

Yes our house is quieter, that is mostly good. What's weird to me is that they all moved out more than six months ago and I'm still feeling the difference. We left on our two month sojourn just after they left, so didn't have much time to grieve then. Then we got back only three months before leaving the country, so there was a lot to do to plan and execute that move. 

Now it's all over and there isn't much to plan, not so much to talk about. That's weird. We've sat for so long with trying to figure out "what's next" and especially wondering how we'd be able to achieve all that was necessary for our guys to all move out and us move back to Japan without them. After living with that tension and stress, it's an adjustment to get back to a more "boring" life. Living life with contentment is obviously something I need to work on.

So, overall it's good, but there's no quick answer to "What's it like without your kids?"