The Best Empty Nest Guide!

Barbara and Susan's Guide to the Empty Nest

This has to be my all time favorite book on the subject of navigating the empty nest years. Leave it to Family Life Ministries, Barbara Rainey and Susan Yates to come up with a truly great resource for gracefully making one's way through this sometimes treacherous journey. Even the cover makes you just want to pick it up and dive in. (To those of you readers who are miles away from your empty nest years, pretty much anything else by either of these authors will also be worth getting your hands on! Family Life Ministries as well as Focus on the Family are invaluable Christian resources for this or any stage of life.)

Why do I love it? I got it last year in the middle of our downsizing, marrying off, graduating the last little bird stage. We were living in a cramped apartment, waiting for our house to be finished, completing our last year of homeschooling and I was frankly a little less than thrilled to be where I was. I must admit this book elicited as many tears as it did chuckles, but that isn't all bad. I could really relate to the many heartfelt stories these two sweet ladies shared. I so want to be friends with them! I got a wonderful glimpse into their own journeys and even while blubbering along, I felt a little less alone and lot more encouraged that I might actually get through this in one piece and unmedicated!

They covered with humility, humor and enormous scoops of Biblical wisdom, areas I would not have considered until they were upon me. Barbara and Susan really wrote the book together and it reads like a narrative of a coffee date among friends. They explore the loneliness, disappointments, fears and questions about the future for Moms moving into the empty nest years. They explained gently, in a way I could really grasp, the need for mothers to become smaller in the lives of their children as they leave the nest. It is painful but true. Chapters on relating to hubby (who probably won't feel this transition in life as keenly,) adult children and even caring for aging parents provide wonderful insights. They encourage women to continue or reestablish meaningful relationships with friends as well. I'm working on that one.  Having six children and now five more who have married into this big family, there is no way we can predict how many grandchildren we will eventually get to enjoy. These authors, who between them have eleven children and twenty-five grandchildren, cautioned against starting things, traditions, commitments that may not be feasible to carry out to all those grand babies! They are speaking my language. They suggested ways to keep the adult kids connected to you and to one another, without being overbearing, making quality time for grandchildren and engaging wisely in the extended families they represent. Most importantly to me, the ladies remind their readers that life is anything but over at this stage. Several chapters delve into such topics as "Discovering Your New Purpose" and "Changing Your World." I picked up Barbara and Susan's Guide to the Empty Nest again this week (I do that sometimes, read a good book again!) and was surprised at how much has changed in my life even in just a year. Chapters and topics that did not apply to me so much last year are really coming into clearer focus now. They have also provided many helpful discussion topics for talk time with my sweet husband. As if that were not enough, the book is filled with discussion questions and personal application activities. Other women share stories at the end of each chapter as well. The appendixes in the back include several resources to help make the transition even easier, covering topics like checklists for caring for aging parents, developing your relationship with God and cultivating faithfulness.

I have a stack of books and Bible studies on this topic, many are very good, but none are as thorough and at the same time warm and comforting as Barbara and Susan's Guide.... Available at Christianbook.com, Amazon.com or FamilyLife.com. Check it out!