I’m pretty sure it was the summer after first grade, though it could have been kindergarten. I remember exactly where I was sitting—on the picnic table at the city park in Akron, Colorado—and I can picture the scene in my head like I’m looking at a Polaroid. I was there with my older brother, a few of his friends, and our babysitter. For some unknown reason, this high-school babysitter chose this moment to fill me in on where babies came from. She didn’t spare any details. I was slightly nauseated yet grateful that the older boys were off playing on their own and not witnessing my horror. Surely she was wrong, I thought. I hoped. But how would I know unless I checked with someone else, and I wasn’t about to do that. Huh-uh. Ick. Instead, I just spent the next several years wondering, until people around me started talking about it—until eventually they stopped talking about much of anything else.
I have recalled this experience in recent days as Kevin and I have discussed having “The Talk” with our oldest. He’s almost 9, going into third grade—it’s probably time. We’re pretty sure it will be news to him (he goes to a pretty unusual school), and we want him to hear it from us, not from some hormone-impaired sixth-grader somewhere. We’ve talked about who will say what and when we’ll say it. It seems it will most naturally come up on the annual father-son camping trip this summer.
I attempted a preface to The Talk about 18 months ago when I was great with child and had a built-in prop. I sought out the most recommended book for kids ages 5 to 7 but discovered it was too graphic for even me to bare. I turned instead to the book for 3- to 5-year-olds and still found myself changing some of the words. We didn’t get into the nitty-gritty of it all, mostly because I only had about a five-minute attention span to work with.
Jokes have been written and television shows have been made about parents sweating out The Talk. But as it becomes a reality in my own life, I’ve realized that this topic is so important and will have such power in their young lives that it deserves far more than the obligatory one-time Talk. (Yeah, I know everyone else figured this out long ago, but it’s pretty revolutionary to someone who grew up like I did. My parents never said a single word.) I think it will be less of a Talk and more of a perpetual dialogue. As foreign as that is to Kevin and me, it’s something we’re going to have to get comfortable with. Because the only way it’s gonna happen is for us to be comfortable. And calm. And real.
With four kids—and three daughters, Lord have mercy!—we’ve got quite the journey ahead of us. Boy, I don’t want to mess this up. Part of our family mission statement is that our home will be a safe place where our kids can learn to be all that God designed them to be. That includes being physically safe, but it also means a place where you can ask questions, work through your problems, and share your failures as well as your successes. It’s an open, comfortable place. That means I need to be an open, comfortable mom. They will grow into their own convictions and make their own decisions and likely they will not always be ones I share. But our job as parents is to lay the foundations now that help them form those convictions, and I pray we do it well.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Friday, July 11, 2008
Tears
I have a friend with the ministry of tears. She once sent me a card that said, “If you need someone to cry with, I’m here. That’s what I do.” She’s in good company. Jesus had this ministry too. We all learned when we were kids that the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Jesus wept because his friend Lazarus had died. Of course Jesus, being Jesus and all, had the advantage of knowing He Himself would raise Lazarus in a matter of minutes, but He still cried right alongside the other mourners because He had the ministry of tears.
I don’t so much have this ministry. I’ve been known to bring other people to tears (in love, of course), but I’m not much of a crier. When I do cry, I prefer to do it alone. God, however, wanted something different for me. He has tears for me to share, tears I didn’t discover until I lost Catherine. Losing a baby has given me the ministry of tears for other women who endure the same thing, particularly stillbirth. It may not be surprising that my stillbirth experience has had this effect on me, but I am always caught off guard by the intensity with which these emotions wallop me.
It happened again this week. It happens more often than I ever knew, though statistically speaking, stillbirths occur in only one in 200 pregnancies. But each “one” represented by that statistic is a lost first tooth, first step, first day of school, first date, to the parents who dared to dream such dreams for their child.
I was thinking of this as I drove around today, listening to my ABBA CD. Just then these words belted out of their Swedish mouths, from the song “The Winner Takes It All”:
“The gods will throw the dice,
their minds as cold as ice,
and someone way down here
loses something dear.”
How sad is that? If that’s really what I thought happened to Catherine—that some cold, uncaring, impersonal gods somewhere just threw the dice and struck her unlucky number, my unlucky number—if I thought that was what her life and death were all about, how could I go on? If I believed whoever’s running the show was really that capricious, who used us all like meaningless pieces in a board game, why would I want to go on? Where would my hope come from?
My hope comes from Jeremiah 29:11–13. “ ‘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. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me.’ ”
As much as it hurt to say goodbye to that baby and all my grand plans for her, I knew God’s plans for me, even without her, were far greater. His plans for Catherine were grander than any I could have dreamed for her. And I also knew that as I cried and cried for her, my loving God cried with me.
I don’t so much have this ministry. I’ve been known to bring other people to tears (in love, of course), but I’m not much of a crier. When I do cry, I prefer to do it alone. God, however, wanted something different for me. He has tears for me to share, tears I didn’t discover until I lost Catherine. Losing a baby has given me the ministry of tears for other women who endure the same thing, particularly stillbirth. It may not be surprising that my stillbirth experience has had this effect on me, but I am always caught off guard by the intensity with which these emotions wallop me.
It happened again this week. It happens more often than I ever knew, though statistically speaking, stillbirths occur in only one in 200 pregnancies. But each “one” represented by that statistic is a lost first tooth, first step, first day of school, first date, to the parents who dared to dream such dreams for their child.
I was thinking of this as I drove around today, listening to my ABBA CD. Just then these words belted out of their Swedish mouths, from the song “The Winner Takes It All”:
“The gods will throw the dice,
their minds as cold as ice,
and someone way down here
loses something dear.”
How sad is that? If that’s really what I thought happened to Catherine—that some cold, uncaring, impersonal gods somewhere just threw the dice and struck her unlucky number, my unlucky number—if I thought that was what her life and death were all about, how could I go on? If I believed whoever’s running the show was really that capricious, who used us all like meaningless pieces in a board game, why would I want to go on? Where would my hope come from?
My hope comes from Jeremiah 29:11–13. “ ‘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. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me.’ ”
As much as it hurt to say goodbye to that baby and all my grand plans for her, I knew God’s plans for me, even without her, were far greater. His plans for Catherine were grander than any I could have dreamed for her. And I also knew that as I cried and cried for her, my loving God cried with me.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Writing for My Life
It seems like I should have something profoundly patriotic to write about today. I don’t, so instead, I’m observing a celebration of my own: six months of blogging. Who knew I had so much to say?! I doubt that anything I’ve written has made the world a better place, but it’s certainly made my brain a better place—and that’s a good thing since I spend a lot of time there.
I find that I don’t really know what I think until I write something down. All day long, random thoughts snake their way through my brain matter, occasionally connecting to other thoughts or something I’ve read or heard that’s still sitting there in my short-term memory, waiting for me to do something with it. It’s a tangled mess, kinda like my daughters’ hair when they wake up in the morning. Writing is my detangler. It’s how I work out the knots, find the strands that belong together, and yank out a few that have served their purpose but need to go. It’s how I tame my static and smooth out my kinks. I can’t imagine how I’d ever have a well-formed, decent idea without writing about it first.
It’s also my therapy. When I’m lonely, I write and find solace. When I’m weary, I write and I’m energized. When I’m stressed, I write and I’m calmed. When I’m purposeless, I write and find new vision. When I’m hungry, I eat. Junkfood, usually. Still working on that one.
Finally, writing is my history. I started journaling in junior high and have a written record of two-thirds of my life. It’s not necessarily pleasant to relive the pity party that was my high-school existence, but it’s all there should I feel like settling in for a day of anguish and torment—and occasionally I do. Much better than that, I love using my journals to track answered prayer, growth and maturity, and silly ideas that never went anywhere. I highly recommend journaling, even for the nonwriters of the world. Even just a sentence or two every night before bed can serve to clear your brain, counsel your soul, and record your history. Give it a try for a month and see what happens.
Happy Independence Day, and thanks for making the trek through my brain with me. I hope you come out unscathed.
I find that I don’t really know what I think until I write something down. All day long, random thoughts snake their way through my brain matter, occasionally connecting to other thoughts or something I’ve read or heard that’s still sitting there in my short-term memory, waiting for me to do something with it. It’s a tangled mess, kinda like my daughters’ hair when they wake up in the morning. Writing is my detangler. It’s how I work out the knots, find the strands that belong together, and yank out a few that have served their purpose but need to go. It’s how I tame my static and smooth out my kinks. I can’t imagine how I’d ever have a well-formed, decent idea without writing about it first.
It’s also my therapy. When I’m lonely, I write and find solace. When I’m weary, I write and I’m energized. When I’m stressed, I write and I’m calmed. When I’m purposeless, I write and find new vision. When I’m hungry, I eat. Junkfood, usually. Still working on that one.
Finally, writing is my history. I started journaling in junior high and have a written record of two-thirds of my life. It’s not necessarily pleasant to relive the pity party that was my high-school existence, but it’s all there should I feel like settling in for a day of anguish and torment—and occasionally I do. Much better than that, I love using my journals to track answered prayer, growth and maturity, and silly ideas that never went anywhere. I highly recommend journaling, even for the nonwriters of the world. Even just a sentence or two every night before bed can serve to clear your brain, counsel your soul, and record your history. Give it a try for a month and see what happens.
Happy Independence Day, and thanks for making the trek through my brain with me. I hope you come out unscathed.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Upping My Freak-Out Threshold
Freak-out threshold. Know what yours is?
Wednesday night our family set out for a concert in the park for some fun and relaxation. Our expectations went unmet when our four-year-old cracked her chin open on a cement caterpillar. (Gotta watch out for those cement caterpillars. They’ll get you every time.) After pawning off our two older kids, Kevin and I spent the next hour driving our bleeding Brooka and her hungry baby sister over the river and through the woods looking for an urgent-care center. At long last, we finally found a doctor who sewed four cobalt stitches into Brooka’s chin.
This is not an unusual experience for a parent. It was actually our first real emergency of any kind, which is the most unusual thing about it. The most memorable part is that Brooka never freaked out. At the moment of impact, Addison ran Paul Revere-style through the playground screaming, “Bloody Chin! Bloody Chin!” Brooka, though looking somewhat dazed and confused, didn’t cry once. Not even a tear through the whole three-hour ordeal—including when the doctor fired multiple shots into her messy open wound. Reclining on the hospital bed with her ankles crossed, she even sighed, “This is the life.”
That moment confirmed a fuzzy hunch I’ve had all along: Brooka has a very high freak-out threshold. Like the rest of us, she occasionally gets miffed when things don’t go her way, but we don’t ever see her thrown into full nuclear meltdown. One or two of my other children, whose identities I will protect, do not share this quality. One in particular requires a high level of order, structure, information, and familiarity. Anything out of the ordinary is questioned and viewed with reserve (at best) or panic (at worst). The freak-out threshold here is extremely low. Even a simple request to remove shoes in public could send this particular child into a two-year-old frenzy. Maturity and life experience have helped immensely, but the freak-out bar still hovers low to the ground.
I can’t just file away interesting kid moments. I have to study them and try to see what I can apply to my own adult life. So I did a quick check of my own freak-out threshold. It’s gotten a whole lot higher with each new baby. Surpassing the national average of children has taught me more about letting go of control and embracing chaos than anything else. But I can still get plenty upset—at least inside my head—when life feels like it’s spinning out of control. I think that’s why God gave me the picture of a four-year-old laying there getting her chin sewed up. She closed her eyes, gently squeezed my hand, and thought about her favorite thing, tigers. That got her through it calmly and patiently. Thinking about my favorite things, remembering how hugely blessed I am, and trusting that the God of the universe has His hand wrapped around mine is what I want to do the next time I feel my freak coming on. I just wanna be like Brooka.
Wednesday night our family set out for a concert in the park for some fun and relaxation. Our expectations went unmet when our four-year-old cracked her chin open on a cement caterpillar. (Gotta watch out for those cement caterpillars. They’ll get you every time.) After pawning off our two older kids, Kevin and I spent the next hour driving our bleeding Brooka and her hungry baby sister over the river and through the woods looking for an urgent-care center. At long last, we finally found a doctor who sewed four cobalt stitches into Brooka’s chin.
This is not an unusual experience for a parent. It was actually our first real emergency of any kind, which is the most unusual thing about it. The most memorable part is that Brooka never freaked out. At the moment of impact, Addison ran Paul Revere-style through the playground screaming, “Bloody Chin! Bloody Chin!” Brooka, though looking somewhat dazed and confused, didn’t cry once. Not even a tear through the whole three-hour ordeal—including when the doctor fired multiple shots into her messy open wound. Reclining on the hospital bed with her ankles crossed, she even sighed, “This is the life.”
That moment confirmed a fuzzy hunch I’ve had all along: Brooka has a very high freak-out threshold. Like the rest of us, she occasionally gets miffed when things don’t go her way, but we don’t ever see her thrown into full nuclear meltdown. One or two of my other children, whose identities I will protect, do not share this quality. One in particular requires a high level of order, structure, information, and familiarity. Anything out of the ordinary is questioned and viewed with reserve (at best) or panic (at worst). The freak-out threshold here is extremely low. Even a simple request to remove shoes in public could send this particular child into a two-year-old frenzy. Maturity and life experience have helped immensely, but the freak-out bar still hovers low to the ground.
I can’t just file away interesting kid moments. I have to study them and try to see what I can apply to my own adult life. So I did a quick check of my own freak-out threshold. It’s gotten a whole lot higher with each new baby. Surpassing the national average of children has taught me more about letting go of control and embracing chaos than anything else. But I can still get plenty upset—at least inside my head—when life feels like it’s spinning out of control. I think that’s why God gave me the picture of a four-year-old laying there getting her chin sewed up. She closed her eyes, gently squeezed my hand, and thought about her favorite thing, tigers. That got her through it calmly and patiently. Thinking about my favorite things, remembering how hugely blessed I am, and trusting that the God of the universe has His hand wrapped around mine is what I want to do the next time I feel my freak coming on. I just wanna be like Brooka.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
What I Have in Common with a Single Girl
I’m reading another great book. At first glance it’s not real relevant to my life, because it’s called Revelations of a Single Woman. I’m pretty much everything that’s the opposite of single. But the subtitle, Loving the Life I Didn’t Expect, hits pretty close to home right now.
I had planned to work at The Navigators until they rolled me out of there in my wheelchair, laptop still glued to my wrists. I had planned to have insider information on our organization’s search for a new U.S. director and be deeply involved in making his (yeah, it’ll be a man) announcement public. I had planned to organize and celebrate 50th birthday parties for two beloved coworkers this fall. I had planned to be part of video shoots and morale-building fun days, important meetings and spontaneous heart-to-hearts over bagels in the common area.
Connally Gilliam, the author of the book I’m reading, had planned to marry the man of her dreams, grow into maternity clothes, and be the first-grade room mom by now. Still unmarried in her early 40s, she’s realizing that our plans don’t always turn out like we had hoped. Yet her unwavering trust in the One whose plans always turn out best is a powerful example to me.
She includes a chapter on letting go—specifically letting go of old friends as they marry off and transition into a different place in life. She writes with jarring transparency about feeling left behind, left out, left alone. How weird that I—a woman who married well at 24 and lives one of the most fulfilled lives imaginable—can relate to those feelings. But letting go is a part of life for all of us, the fulfilled and unfulfilled alike. And letting go, for me, is excruciating.
God has used Connally to teach me about letting go graciously. She believes that all the investing in and letting go of relationships has actually served to plow the field of her heart, making her more fertile to new relationships as they come along. (I'm not usually one for agricultural metaphors, but that one really works for me.)
I had planned to work at The Navigators until they rolled me out of there in my wheelchair, laptop still glued to my wrists. I had planned to have insider information on our organization’s search for a new U.S. director and be deeply involved in making his (yeah, it’ll be a man) announcement public. I had planned to organize and celebrate 50th birthday parties for two beloved coworkers this fall. I had planned to be part of video shoots and morale-building fun days, important meetings and spontaneous heart-to-hearts over bagels in the common area.
Connally Gilliam, the author of the book I’m reading, had planned to marry the man of her dreams, grow into maternity clothes, and be the first-grade room mom by now. Still unmarried in her early 40s, she’s realizing that our plans don’t always turn out like we had hoped. Yet her unwavering trust in the One whose plans always turn out best is a powerful example to me.
She includes a chapter on letting go—specifically letting go of old friends as they marry off and transition into a different place in life. She writes with jarring transparency about feeling left behind, left out, left alone. How weird that I—a woman who married well at 24 and lives one of the most fulfilled lives imaginable—can relate to those feelings. But letting go is a part of life for all of us, the fulfilled and unfulfilled alike. And letting go, for me, is excruciating.
God has used Connally to teach me about letting go graciously. She believes that all the investing in and letting go of relationships has actually served to plow the field of her heart, making her more fertile to new relationships as they come along. (I'm not usually one for agricultural metaphors, but that one really works for me.)
That doesn’t mean you can’t weep on your bathroom floor when letting go is hard. It doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally indulge your feelings of left-outness. But it does mean you don’t get to push people out of your life just because being around them reminds you that they’ve moved on. It does mean you can’t cling so hard to the past that you miss what God’s doing with your present. Relationships will change and awkward moments when my friends are all talking about the hilarious thing that happened at work will surely arise, but through all that I get to trust that even though this isn’t the place I expected to be, it’s the place I’m supposed to be.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Things I Learned from Braden's Week at Camp
• The human earlobe can hold a lot of dirt.
• There are some socks too foul to spare.
• The “sanitary” setting on my washing machine is a God-send.
• Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve never seen my kids love on each other the way they did when Braden came home.
• A homely stuffed squirrel wearing an Eagle Lake t-shirt is never as special as when it’s given to a four-year old girl by her eight-year-old brother.
• Being the oldest child is a big deal. Addison assumed the role with vision and zeal.
• Despite all evidence to the contrary, Braden deeply cares for his sisters.
• I love watching my kids do the things they’re good at. I’m even prouder when I watch them keep trying when things don't come easy .
• Just as important as the fun of camp is the hardship of camp.
• Little boys were made to shoot rifles, bows, and baskets.
• To a little boy, even a pine cone is a weapon.
• Eight-year-old boys can survive quite nicely without anything electronic.
• You can’t put a pricetag on watching your kid learn how to turn his attitude around.
• It’s worth the extra 50 bucks to send your kid to camp when it’s actually summer. In Colorado, that means the last week of July.
• Ziplines are fun for kids and frustrating for mothers who are bad with cameras.
• Eagle Lake is more personal and more professional than I ever knew. They also make the boys bus the girls’ trays. Enough said.
• College students have as much energy as toddlers and don’t drool as much.
• I would make a lousy camp counselor.
• I make my best parenting decisions when I’m using my common sense, not following my heart.
• People named Tiny are rarely tiny. Kids find this amusing.
• Being invited to join one game of Nuke-em can change a kid for days.
• Our job is not to rescue our kids from difficulty but to direct them to the only true Rescuer.
• Camp teaches parents just as much as it teaches kids.
• There are some socks too foul to spare.
• The “sanitary” setting on my washing machine is a God-send.
• Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve never seen my kids love on each other the way they did when Braden came home.
• A homely stuffed squirrel wearing an Eagle Lake t-shirt is never as special as when it’s given to a four-year old girl by her eight-year-old brother.
• Being the oldest child is a big deal. Addison assumed the role with vision and zeal.
• Despite all evidence to the contrary, Braden deeply cares for his sisters.
• I love watching my kids do the things they’re good at. I’m even prouder when I watch them keep trying when things don't come easy .
• Just as important as the fun of camp is the hardship of camp.
• Little boys were made to shoot rifles, bows, and baskets.
• To a little boy, even a pine cone is a weapon.
• Eight-year-old boys can survive quite nicely without anything electronic.
• You can’t put a pricetag on watching your kid learn how to turn his attitude around.
• It’s worth the extra 50 bucks to send your kid to camp when it’s actually summer. In Colorado, that means the last week of July.
• Ziplines are fun for kids and frustrating for mothers who are bad with cameras.
• Eagle Lake is more personal and more professional than I ever knew. They also make the boys bus the girls’ trays. Enough said.
• College students have as much energy as toddlers and don’t drool as much.
• I would make a lousy camp counselor.
• I make my best parenting decisions when I’m using my common sense, not following my heart.
• People named Tiny are rarely tiny. Kids find this amusing.
• Being invited to join one game of Nuke-em can change a kid for days.
• Our job is not to rescue our kids from difficulty but to direct them to the only true Rescuer.
• Camp teaches parents just as much as it teaches kids.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Camper Boy
My son’s fearlessness is baffling me. He leaves today for camp, and from what I can tell, he’s not taking a single worry with him. No anxiety, no butterflies in the belly. Nothing but his wide-eyed, eight-year-old self.
Like camp mothers before me, I lovingly washed and labeled each piece of his clothing yesterday. While pondering the odd sensation of writing with a Sharpie on Superman underwear, I also thought of the two-year-old boy who howled and sobbed when we dropped him off at the church nursery for 90 minutes. We bribed him with everything imaginable, but when at last he thought to bring his Pooh Bear along—combined with just the right teacher who eagerly included Pooh in all the snacks and crafts—his screaming subsided and we were able to go to church peacefully.
I thought of the one-year-old little boy with a death grip around my neck at our “Mommy and Me” swim class. Now he’s counting the minutes until he can be launched off the blob, into an icy lake, by some portly 11-year-old. He smiles at the idea of riding the zipline—the longest in North America, I might add—over this same lake.
I also thought of the sequence of events in my own life that have brought us to this day. I visited Eagle Lake Camp for the first time in 1994. Many days in my 20s were spent writing stories about camp for The Navigators and interviewing parents about their children’s experiences. And with just a blink of an eye (and 31 hours of labor), I’ve now become one of those parents.
I thought of Dawson Trotman and Lorne Sanny—the first Navigator leaders who started Eagle Lake in 1957—and their passion for ministering to young boys. They knew this is where you reach a man’s heart—inside the body of a boy. I thought of the many men I’ve met through The Navigators over the years, men with such depth of character and sold-out commitment to God. These are qualities I pray for my son, and I know they take root early on. Kevin and I do all we can to nurture that process along, but the investment and influence of a 21-year-old godly dude on a zipline will go further than I’ll ever know.
The undies are labeled now, the clothes are packed, alongside Braden’s Bible and a little notebook he requested to use as a journal. I tried to throw in a comb, but was told, “If you pack that, I’m not gonna use it.” (This journey is as much about me letting go of control as it is about Braden, I think.) The only one around here who seems wrought with emotion is me, even though I know he’ll be fine. My friend Craig, who used to run the camp back when I was writing about it, used to come down the mountain every August and say, “Well, no one died and no one got pregnant. It was a good summer.” I’m fairly certain neither of those things will happen to my boy, either. Much more likely, he’ll come down the mountain with a new sense of adventure and confidence, a jumble of incredible memories, and a heart more sensitive to the God of the universe. Not bad for $350 and a little separation anxiety for mom.
Like camp mothers before me, I lovingly washed and labeled each piece of his clothing yesterday. While pondering the odd sensation of writing with a Sharpie on Superman underwear, I also thought of the two-year-old boy who howled and sobbed when we dropped him off at the church nursery for 90 minutes. We bribed him with everything imaginable, but when at last he thought to bring his Pooh Bear along—combined with just the right teacher who eagerly included Pooh in all the snacks and crafts—his screaming subsided and we were able to go to church peacefully.
I thought of the one-year-old little boy with a death grip around my neck at our “Mommy and Me” swim class. Now he’s counting the minutes until he can be launched off the blob, into an icy lake, by some portly 11-year-old. He smiles at the idea of riding the zipline—the longest in North America, I might add—over this same lake.
I also thought of the sequence of events in my own life that have brought us to this day. I visited Eagle Lake Camp for the first time in 1994. Many days in my 20s were spent writing stories about camp for The Navigators and interviewing parents about their children’s experiences. And with just a blink of an eye (and 31 hours of labor), I’ve now become one of those parents.
I thought of Dawson Trotman and Lorne Sanny—the first Navigator leaders who started Eagle Lake in 1957—and their passion for ministering to young boys. They knew this is where you reach a man’s heart—inside the body of a boy. I thought of the many men I’ve met through The Navigators over the years, men with such depth of character and sold-out commitment to God. These are qualities I pray for my son, and I know they take root early on. Kevin and I do all we can to nurture that process along, but the investment and influence of a 21-year-old godly dude on a zipline will go further than I’ll ever know.
The undies are labeled now, the clothes are packed, alongside Braden’s Bible and a little notebook he requested to use as a journal. I tried to throw in a comb, but was told, “If you pack that, I’m not gonna use it.” (This journey is as much about me letting go of control as it is about Braden, I think.) The only one around here who seems wrought with emotion is me, even though I know he’ll be fine. My friend Craig, who used to run the camp back when I was writing about it, used to come down the mountain every August and say, “Well, no one died and no one got pregnant. It was a good summer.” I’m fairly certain neither of those things will happen to my boy, either. Much more likely, he’ll come down the mountain with a new sense of adventure and confidence, a jumble of incredible memories, and a heart more sensitive to the God of the universe. Not bad for $350 and a little separation anxiety for mom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)