Sleeping Through the Process

This post is about Cassie, the baby of the family. Until she got in high school, she never caused any trouble, except when she was sleeping. When she was about 2, she came up missing. For over an hour, we looked for her. We couldn't find her in the house or yard. She had been excited about hearing the ice cream truck earlier, so we went across the block to see if anyone had seen her there. Someone on that street described a little girl like her and said she had been dragged into a car with no license, kicking and screaming. We thought, "Oh, God! The thing that we have feared has come upon us. Our child has been kidnapped!" That car and that little girl were found a half hour later, on the next block. But ours was still missing. Half the town had come to help us look for her. We had looked along the streets, and at the park. We were praying, frantic and in despair. About the time we decided to call our folks with the bad news, a young friend, Kelly, found her asleep on the top bunk with a pile of clothes pulled up over her. She had slept through the whole thing.
One Sunday evening, when she was still small, we were getting ready for church. Dad and the kids left ahead of me, and I hollered "Take Cassie with you". They said "Okay." So I finished getting myself together, and looked on the bed where Cassie had been sleeping, just to make sure that they had taken her. She was gone, so I assumed they did. When I got to church, I looked for Cassie, and she was nowhere to be seen. I asked, "Where is Cassie?" Beth said, "Dad said to leave her on the couch at home; that you would bring her." So I rushed back home, and there she was, sleeping on the couch. Again, she had slept through the whole thing.
When she was four, she was riding on the back seat of a church van, leaning up over the back of the seat in front of her, dozing. We had a head-on collision, and she came flying over the seats, getting her head crammed into the glove box. The impact broke open her skull and blood was spurting out at every heartbeat. The van caught on fire, so the man in the truck behind us dragged us out of the vehicle. I was also hurt and unconscious, so I was no help. (And I had gone with the kids to take care of them!) Cassie had emergency brain surgery to remove fragments of her brain and repair the broken skull. She walked out of that hospital in nine days! A miracle! Another bad thing that God has turned for the good.
Well, of course with all this trauma, we babied her ridiculously. And she soaked up the spoiling like a sponge. Used it to her advantage many times. She hated school from kindergarten on, but was no trouble to the teachers, until high school. Those were tumultuous days, but she made it through, revealing lovely artistic talents, and graduated. (Maybe she slept through that, too?)
Now she is in the process of breaking away from the nest. Or maybe it is us who are in the process of trying to let her go. We've been here 3 times before, but it isn't any easier with the last one through the door. It is my observation that it takes at least five years for this process to bring a person to enough maturity for someone to cut the apron strings of parenthood. (And it always feels like the kid is hacking away at them with a pair of dull scissors. Oh no, that's not the apron strings. There is too much pain! It's the heart strings!) We don't hear from her often, because she wants to 'do it herself!' If I learned anything from that car wreck when Cassie was small, it is this; God is the one who takes care of my children even if I am with them. Or if I'm not. He loves her more than I do, and he knows her better than me. He has a purpose for her life and is fully well able to finish what he started. So maybe I'll just sleep this one through, while she and God work through the process.