The Children We Borrowed, The Love We Keep

While we may not have children of our own, we have supported six children through degrees and master’s, watched them grow into their futures, and discovered how deeply a life can become entwined with yours. It is good to hand them back at the end, of course. There is the quiet to enjoy, the sofa to reclaim, the small pleasure of a house restored to order.

Though, if we are honest, it is somewhat heartbreaking.

For a while, you hear them in the house after they have gone. You remember a conversation halfway up the stairs. You look at the chair where they sat and almost ask whether they would like some tea. Then you remember.

They are getting on with their lives.

Which is precisely what you wanted.

You had simply not realised how much you would miss being part of their everyday.

THE LOVE THAT ARRIVES QUIETLY

We talk about supporting someone through education as though it were a tidy arrangement. Help with a course. Encouragement before an examination. Advice when a decision feels too large.

Yet somewhere between the first anxious conversation and the final result, something happens.

Their worries begin to accompany you through your own day. You wonder whether the interview went well. Whether they have eaten. Whether the silence means they are busy or struggling. You learn when to offer advice and when to sit quietly while they find the words.

And when they succeed, the happiness catches you unprepared.

You see the photograph, read the message, hear the relief in their voice, and suddenly your eyes fill. You remember how close they came to giving up. You remember the doubts they entrusted to you, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes late at night, when everything felt worse.

There they are now, standing a little taller.

You feel grateful that they let you walk beside them.

PREPARING FOR A WORLD WE CANNOT SEE

There is something extraordinary about the months before birth. Within the womb, a child develops lungs for air they have never breathed. Their body prepares for an existence beyond anything they have yet experienced.

I find myself wondering whether our hearts are doing something similar.

Perhaps our years here, with their responsibilities and interruptions, their tenderness and disappointments, are preparing us for a life whose fullness we cannot yet understand.

If love is the breath of that life, then these ordinary days matter profoundly.

Every time we make room for another person, we practise.

Every time we listen when we are tired, forgive when we are hurt, or remain present when there is nothing useful to say, something within us grows.

Often, we only recognise that growth afterwards. We discover that someone else’s happiness has become necessary to our own.

THE PARENTAL HEART

Supporting those six young people has made me think differently about the parental heart.

It begins, perhaps, when you want someone to flourish so much that you are willing to help them towards a future in which they will need you less.

There is a particular ache in that.

You spend years helping someone become confident enough to leave. Then the day comes when they do.

You are proud. You mean every word of your congratulations. You want them to take the opportunity, make the journey, build the life.

Still, when they have gone, you take a little longer clearing the table.

A parental heart can live in many people: the teacher who notices a child withdrawing; the aunt who answers the telephone without checking the time; the manager who helps someone prepare for a role that will take them elsewhere.

It grows wherever care becomes patient enough to put another person’s future first.

WHAT THE EMPTY ROOM TEACHES US

There are moments when love feels wonderfully practical. You can make a meal, read an application, find the right words of encouragement.

Then there are moments when love leaves you with very little to do.

You cannot sit the examination for them. You cannot spare them every rejection. You cannot follow them into each uncertain room and explain how much they have to offer.

You must trust what has grown within them.

That trust can feel painfully like helplessness.

Perhaps this is one of love’s hardest lessons: learning to remain available without holding on too tightly.

We are still learning.

Some days, a brief message is enough to brighten the whole afternoon. Some days, we would dearly love a longer conversation. We remind ourselves that a busy, independent life is something to celebrate.

Then we send our love and let them get on.

A CITY FULL OF PEOPLE TO LOVE

Living in Birmingham offers endless opportunities to widen that care.

So many histories travel beside us on the bus. So many languages carry the same concern for a child, the same longing for belonging, the same grief for someone who will never come home.

A conversation can reveal how much we share.

Across our different faiths and traditions, we encounter people trying to live with goodness, raise their families, honour their dead and make sense of suffering.

When we approach each other with respect, friendship becomes possible.

And friendship changes the scale of our concern. A place once distant becomes somewhere a friend’s mother lives. A troubling headline becomes a reason to telephone someone and ask whether their family is safe.

The heart learns through particular people.

Then, gradually, it makes room for more.

THE COURAGE TO KEEP LOVING

Of course, loving people does not make us endlessly patient or wise.

We misunderstand. We become tired. We say something badly and wish we could retrieve it.

Spiritual growth asks us to return to those moments honestly. To apologise. To hear an explanation without preparing our defence. To forgive while acknowledging that something hurt.

These are difficult, intimate acts.

They matter because relationships must survive the days when we disappoint each other. A loving home needs room for repair, for the hesitant conversation after an argument, for the relief of discovering that affection has endured.

That is a lesson worth passing on.

WHAT WE HOPE THEY REMEMBER

One day, perhaps, those six young people will remember these years differently from us.

They may forget the advice. They may barely recall the anxious conversations that stayed with us for days.

I hope they remember how it felt to be welcomed.

I hope that, somewhere within them, there is a steady certainty that they mattered to us before the results arrived, before the qualifications, before they could show the world what they were capable of.

And I hope they carry that certainty into someone else’s life.

For now, we will keep cheering them on. We will welcome the visits, treasure the messages and pretend to be entirely sensible when it is time to say goodbye.

We may not have children of our own.

But there are six people out in the world whose happiness can bring us to tears.

When the door closes behind them, that love stays.

And sometimes, in the quiet afterwards, it is almost more than the heart can hold.