The high school kid is taking over the college kids bedroom as we speak.

She has been wanting his room since we bought this house years ago. His room is in the basement and has much more privacy than her bedroom, which so happens to be right across the hall from our room.

I mean, I knew I would finally have to give in and let her take over that room of his. More than likely, he will not be living with us full time again, Lord willing anyway.

Already, the room looks completely different. It is cozier and warmer and just the female touch it needed to spruce it up. She has put her little girly things in that room and now it is hard to tell it was ever the home of a teenage boy.

As she was moving some of the college kids things upstairs to her old room, I came across a box she brought upstairs.

Sitting on top of the box was a letter written to my son, the college kid, from me in August 2018. I had no recollection of the letter, I just recognized my loopy handwriting.

I began to read the letter, needing to sit down as I was a few lines in, I caught my breath and pulled the letter to my heart.

Tears were stinging my eyes. My throat closed with that awful lump that forms when you are on the verge of full on crying.

I had written it to him on his 17th birthday.

My daughter, the youngest, is now 17.

Three pages later, I could not believe the treasure that God had just laid in my hands.

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, the good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns! Isaiah 52:7

I was praying this scripture out loud recently. Praying is an understatement. I was literally wailing out to God. Begging Him to bring some good news!

My heart was so weary and overwhelmed with all of the bad news. Text after text, newsfeed after newsfeed, phone call after phone call…

Will the bad news ever end?

As I was lamenting that scripture and the cries of my heart to The Lord, I heard a small voice deep in my heart.

The kind that makes you stop and listen.

A hush came over my heart. Like a mother shhh-ing her baby as she cries.

“I AM the Good News. Stop looking for good news everywhere else, look for Me. I Am the Good News.”

Something has been heavy on my heart the past few weeks.

College kids.

I have had many conversations with parents of kids in college recently and I see a similar theme.

A lot of our college kids are overwhelmed. They are struggling. Fighting tooth and nail to stay afloat.

When my oldest started college in 2019, I never dreamed the pressures that would soon follow.

As Christian families, we raise our kids in an environment that is often counter cultural.

However, when they go off to college, they are faced with a huge wave of cultural norms. Much drinking, partying, hooking up with the opposite sex, casual—super casual relationships with no strings attached.

It can be a shock to their systems.

They go back to their dorms, apartments, and try to process all of this new.

Along with the workload that college courses bring, the sheer weight of this new freedom and new setting can crush even the most disciplined and ambitious kid.