Jay’s Blog – Preparing the Nest
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At this stage in my life, a lot of my close friends’ kids are having kids of their own. As head of Grace for nearly 24 years, one of my greatest joys has been to see my “kids”- my former students- have children of their own and bring them to Grace.
In watching so many of my “kids” have kids, I’m well familiar with the concept of “nesting”: of preparing one’s home for the arrival of a child. I remember our own nesting phase, painting and assembling furniture (pre-IKEA, so it was both simpler and harder), and getting the nursery just so. It’s not as if the infant is going to arrive in his or her new digs and say, “I love what you’ve done here Mom and Dad! Mid-century modern, a few rustic antiques here and there–an eclectic look, my favorite!” Nesting is much more about preparing us for the arrival of the child, for our new, now permanent role as parents.
As my friends and I have reached middle age, however, I have noticed that many parents don’t bring nearly the same intentionality to preparing for empty nesting and for life together as a couple after their children have grown and gone, that they bring to filling their nest. And, that’s not just a shame, but dangerous. When you think about it, most of us who are married spend about two to five years before we fill our nest. You may spend twenty years raising kids, then perhaps twenty-five to thirty years after the last child has flown the coop. With this in mind, doesn’t it make so much more sense to give at least as much time to preparing for empty nesting as you do to filling the nest?
We can’t operate under the assumption that healthy empty nesting will just happen to us, that we’ll just fall into it, any more than we can just assume we’ll be good parents without intentionality. Indeed, so many of my friends have really, really struggled, and sometimes separated or divorced after the kids have gone, because they weren’t prepared. Conversely, I’ve seen lots of my friends doing empty nesting well, finding marriage without kids to be the most satisfying season of their lives.
I love my children, and I love being with them, but I have to tell you, I’m crazy about their mom. I love spending time with her, and I’m so glad that it’s just the two of us at this stage in our lives. I love being with her. This can be you, too. But it requires planning now, because, quite frankly, if you can’t imagine life as a couple without your kids, you are definitely not prepared for empty nesting. So now’s the time to invest in each other and in your future, while they’re still at home. There are things you can do right now to start investing in that empty nest.
First, be disciplined to have a date night with your spouse. The younger your children are, the harder it is. It definitely requires getting a babysitter when they’re younger, unless you have grandparents in town. But it’s also a great side benefit of getting your older kids invested in Wednesday night student ministry. Every Wednesday night, we’d drop our kids off at GSM and then head to dinner. Heck, sometimes we even had time for a Target stop before heading back to pick them up.
Just having that time engaging with each other alone as adults is so critical. If you can’t think of anything to talk about other than the kids, read something together and discuss it, or ask ChatGPT for 10 date-night questions for each other. (Here are two: “What has God been teaching you lately?” “What is a risk you’d love to take in the next five years if you knew you couldn’t fail?”). Sometimes (but not always) it may be a “business meeting”, and you have to talk about the kids, being intentional as parents, as well. But this weekly or near-weekly investment in your marriage pays big dividends later in life, and communicates value to your spouse.
Second, always celebrate your anniversary. The best way is to get someone to watch the kids and go on a little vacation, a long weekend. Even if it’s just getting a good dinner and a night away in a hotel, it’s another way of saying this relationship, the most important earthly one in my life, is important to you. Over the years, you’ll develop a wonderful bank of memories. Even the bad ones are sweet, like how I remember our anniversary trip to Carmel with such fondness, and Ashley can barely remember it at all, pregnant with our second and with a sinus infection.
Our God is a God of remembrance and celebration, and He continuously calls us to both. Do you ever think about the fact that your spouse is the only person you ever swore to God to love, to be 100 percent for, until the day you die? Celebrating our anniversaries is a way of rehearsing that day when we made that oath, celebrating all the good, all the hard, and all the fruit that God has borne in our lives since then, and recommitting to bringing our best to these vows we’ve made.
Third, teach your children that they aren’t the center of the universe, and remind yourselves that your kids aren’t the purpose of your marriage. I love the popular quote about parenting: “Our children are our most important guests, who enter into our home, ask for careful attention, stay for a while, and then leave to follow their own way.” Genesis 1 and Ephesians 5 teach us that the purpose of marriage is for us to become one flesh, to love our spouse as Christ loved the church, wholly and sacrificially, and to glorify God in how we love each other. We begin a family the day we are married, long before children enter the picture.
Children are a blessing from the Lord. They are entrusted to us to raise, to disciple, to shepherd, and then to release. They are a beautiful feature of marriage, but they are not its primary purpose. When we keep in mind that the central relationship in the family is that between husband and wife, it’s so much healthier for our children and for us. Children don’t function well, nor are they well-adjusted, when they’re the center of your marital universe. Further, when they leave, there’s great jeopardy to the marriage, because the center has been pulled away. When we’re intentional about our relationship as a couple, taking time to nurture it when our kids are home, we model good health for them and prepare them well for their future spouses. When we love Jesus first, our spouses second, and then focus on them, we demonstrate rightly-ordered loves for them.
This looks like not making it a defining practice to center every family activity on the children’s practices, or to always sacrifice work or responsibility to others for children’s activities (although the converse is equally unhealthy). It also looks like not having every conversation between spouses centered on our children.
Fourth, find the “one thing.” When Ashley and I were a few years out from empty nesting, I asked several of my couple friends who were several years ahead of me and who seemed to be doing empty nesting well, “What is the one practice that you would recommend to help us be good empty nesters?” To a couple, they always told me, “Find the one thing- the hobby, the activity, the ministry–that you enjoy doing together, and start doing it now. That commonality will be critical for you.”
It took Ashley and me a while for us to discover that CESA–the Christian school organization that Grace helped found and has had membership in since its founding–is that thing. Ashley now works for the executive director of CESA, and the world that once was known only to me has become our world, our ministry, something we’re passionate about. I just wish we had found it sooner. What is your “one thing” as a couple? Is it pickleball? Mahjong? Traveling? Your church youth group? Whatever it is, if you can, start enjoying it together now. Those common interests will serve you well when kids no longer play such a significant role in your life.
Finally, make Jesus the center of your marriage. When we were doing our premarital counseling 30 years ago, the guy who married us had us read “The Marriage Builder, “ by Larry Crabb. I think that book was old even back then, but it had one theme I always remembered. Crabb says that the key to marriage is to build a strong relationship with Jesus and to look to Him for your safety, security, identity, value, and worth. Never look to your spouse to provide those things, because he or she wasn’t created to do so, and he or she will fail you every time (like Matt Chandler famously said, “people make bad gods.”). When Jesus is providing all those things for you, it frees you up to love and serve your spouse the way the Lord intended, because loving them is not an existential crisis for you.
What’s true at the beginning of marriage is true after the kids leave. When Jesus is the center of your marriage, you can just focus on serving and enjoying your spouse. By now, this is the one person in your life who is so for you that they’ll tell you the unvarnished truth about yourself, the one thing you absolutely need to hear, because hearing can lead to your repentance and perfection. That makes them the most valuable person to you in the world. It also opens the possibility for life with them to be a whole lot of fun, as you find yourselves with time to do the things you’ve always said you’d do together, all those Wednesday date nights when the kids were in youth ministry. This is the really good stuff.
My prayer for you, as your life feels consumed with kids right now, is for vision–vision to see that these blessed days will end, and that you’ll likely have many more days ahead with this person you’re tag-teaming through child-rearing with. I hope this vision will spur investment in that empty nest, so that someday it will be rich and full.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.