This is my first attempt at blogging.  I am not sure how often I will venture into this realm, but here is a beginning. 

Last year around this time my wife, Ruby and I dropped our oldest son off at St. Lawrence University to start his college career.   It was very difficult to drive away leaving him on a campus with no friends and 250 miles away from home.  Of course our fears were missed placed and when he called home for the first time he said, “College is the best thing ever.”  He made lots of really good friends, and even though he is not on a Christian campus he has maintained a fairly strong faith.

We raise our children to hopefully become well-adjusted adults and hope we have given them enough information and insight into God’s love and plan to help them make wise decisions when they venture out on their own.  Hoping and praying that God will hold them close as they make their new start.  Well our first release of our son Geoff went very well and he came home at Christmas and thanked us for everything we had done to prepare him to be out on his own.  What a blessing that was for us as parents, but in reality it was God preparing us for Feb. 24, 2007. 

On Feb. 24, 2007 Geoff had a head on collision with a tree while snowboarding on Whiteface Mountain in northeastern New York State.  He was airlifted to Burlington VT and in critical care at Fletcher-Allen Hospital.  That is one phone call you never want to answer.  It was a traumatic time for our family but God’s grace was more than sufficient.    We found a welcoming family in several local churches, even though we were 7 hours from home.  God was gracious to us.  Our son Geoff spent 9 days in ICU 8 of which were in a medically induced comma with a traumatic brain injury.  We spent two weeks and more waiting and praying for the one child we had already begun to release.  But that is not really what this blog is about.  If you want to read the details of that experience, you can check this web page out.  www.caringbridge.org/visit/geoffbaum mostly you will find information in the Journal section.

Here is where our dilemma begins anew.  Geoff has made a remarkable recovery and will be returning to St. Lawrence next Monday or Tuesday, to begin his second year of study.   How do we let go?  We thought it was hard last year, now we have new anxieties that will make this even harder.  Will he be safe?  Of course he has plans to continue snowboarding, he was “having the best winter of his life.”  We will spend the winter on our knees praying for protection.

I know that God will have to give us the strength to drive away from him next week when we drop him off.  God has begun a good work in him and we have to trust Him to see it through to the end.  One verse that brings us comfort through much of this has been Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  We know that Geoff is in God’s hands and plans, so we need to just let go, but it is soooooooo very hard to do.  Please pray for Ruby and me that we can trust God enough to let our son go.