There was only a slight breeze kissing my young cheek, but I smiled with the contented knowledge that it would be enough. My kite had never yet failed to take flight; it was the best in my seemingly infinite neighborhood.
Black, my kite was jet black, with a pair of menacing eyes.
Slight wind? It may as well have been a hurricane. She would fly; I knew that beyond a doubt.
I could not have been more than 7 or 8. The destination was the huge backyard of a church near the home of my grandmother. I often went there to launch my kite. I would fly her for a couple of hours, enjoying the tug of the string and often completely lose sight of her as she climbed. And yet the consistent tug on the string told me she was still there, assuming her rightful spot in the heavens.
I really cannot say how it happened; and yet I still feel a pang of regret 40 years later as I think back on it. One day I launched my indefatigable kite, allowed her to climb out of sight, and then suddenly everything went slack.
My string came drifting back to the earth. The string had broken, and my kite was gone.
Tears stung my eyes as I ran to my grandmother's house. I knew which direction the wind was blowing and, somehow, managed to actually convince my no-nonsense grandmother to drive me around in the car looking for it.
It was a fool's errand. But no more so than the fact that I actually convinced her to put an ad in the local paper offering a reward for its return.
I have not flown a kite in years. Decades, actually. Growing up tends to put myriad responsibilities well in front of lying in a field and flying a kite. And no responsibility has consumed the time, thoughts, finances, prayers and fastings of my wife and myself more so than the raising of three precious children.
We brought each of them home yesterday - 18, 16 and 14 years ago. Where did that 24 hours/decade and a half go? How did my son become a 6-foot, 3-inch high school senior? When did my precocious genius middle child and lightning-in-a-bottle baby girl become two lovely young ladies?
Where are their car seats? Their play pens?
I can feel the string tugging. They are still on the line, but they are climbing higher each day. I keep hearing the wind whisper words like "college" and "job" and even "date" as they continue to rise.
The string is straining. But it will not break. I cannot allow it to break. Something much harder, in fact, will have to take place.
We will actually have to cut the cord.
Mind you, we know this; we always have. From the day my one and only bride found out she was pregnant with our first, we have known, and even prepared, for the cutting of the cord.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:11, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
We have known, and we still know, that our chief job as parents is to prepare our children to move from childhood Christians to adult Christians; from kids who are taken to church, to adults who take themselves to church; from minors who are corralled into right behavior, to adults who stand right and do right long after their mother and I have, quite literally, gone back to the dust from whence we came.
My girls, whom I loved before any other man even knew they existed, will give their hands to some other man. My son, my wife's constant prayer project of decades, will leave her watchful care and stand on his own two wobbly feet that he imagines to be as steady as the white cliffs of Dover.
We know it. We have steeled our hearts and nerves to it. But even now, as they strain upward and the winds of change howl, I cannot bear the thought of cutting the cord. I will; but I do not relish the thought at all.
Come, spring; I feel the need to lie in a field and fly a kite one more time.
Bo Wagner is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church of Mooresboro, N.C., a widely traveled evangelist and the author of several book available on Amazon and at www.wordofhismouth.com. Email him at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.