My Son - Lent Journal (10/40)

This afternoon I was spending time with my son, and I found myself realizing that there are things he's just not good at.

I think it was somewhere between playing Frisbee and playing pool with his friends - really, it's most physical activities; I was watching him struggle with doing things his friend was talented at. What really surprised me was my emotional reaction. I wanted to step in and turn it into a teaching moment for him. I wanted to fix it, and help him get better.

I wanted him to be better.

As his father, I feel a deep responsibility to help my son discover himself, and with that comes expectations that I know I need to let go of, but it's so hard. I want him to be the very best of everything, and while I know that is more than a bit unreasonable, I can't help but look at him and see incredible potential.

I think I take it too hard, but I will confess to feeling responsible for my son's difficulty: with individual activities; skills; life in general. And I know that ultimately I'm not in control, and he will grow up one day and become someone altogether different from what I would ever anticipate.

There are going to be areas where he fails; where he shows no interest in something I think he should enjoy; he's going to make mistakes and some of them won't be easily redeemed.

As a divorce dad, it breaks me knowing I'm already not there every step of the way. I am immensely aware of the areas where I let him down, the memories that aren't being made. The bike he hasn't learned to ride, the ball he hasn't learned to throw, the vacations he hasn't been on, the fishing he's never done (although I've never been fishing either; I didn't say my internal guilt-trip was altogether rational).

I'm not there.

It breaks me, knowing that I won't be able to be there every step of the way. Not having the assurance that he will be okay. I guess we never do have that, and a certain painful death of parenting is coming to understand that you have been entrusted with guiding a human person along the way, but that God is in charge. God gives them to you so that you can become a saint, just as much as you can support them in their own pilgrim's journey.

My son can't throw a ball to save his life. That's okay.

Actually, let me do one better: that is an integral and meaningful part of the story God is writing in his life. In his biography it will say that his inability to throw a ball somehow made him a better person, or glorified God in some subtle way I can't anticipate or comprehend, but it will be incredible in retrospect.

I need to celebrate every moment of this dear child's life - the parts I see as good, and the parts I struggle with and want to change. The parts where he will be hurt ... I can't prevent them all, or even most of them, and that's okay too. Because while I can't be there physically in every moment, he has a Father who loves him deeply and desperately and will always be watching over him.