I haven’t updated the blog in a long time, but to be frank, I have just been too busy. My intention is to do quite a bit of blogging about our experiences in Central America this Summer, but it will have to wait just a little bit longer. With that being said, this is what is on my hear most today.
Nineteen years ago Sunday, I met his mother. Although I had a girlfriend at the time, the moment I saw her, I didn’t want to be apart from her ever again. That night we watched the Perseid meteor shower (you can watch it this weekend). By the time school started the next week, I had fallen in love. A year and a half later we would be married. Less than two years later he was born. The moment the nurse handed him to me I fell in love again. For years I had been loved and loved others, but when I held him it was as if God unlocked a room in my heart that I never even knew existed. It was the room that he and later his baby brother would occupy. It is a love unlike any other I have experienced. It is the love of a father for his sons. I learned more about my Father’s love for me in that moment than I had in a lifetime of sermons.
That moment seemed to last forever, as if time itself stopped to give me a chance to soak up every drop of love that flowed from that little eight pound squirming baby boy. When he cried, I wept and that hasn’t changed in seventeen years. Although that moment seemed to last forever, the next five years didn’t. If anything they seemed to be on fast forward. Before I could blink he was crawling, then walking, then speaking (and boy did he speak). Then came the day when we had our first milestone in his life: the first day of school. We drove over to my grandparents house on Elm Street, which is one block from Pulaski Elementary School. We parked the car, put on his backpack (or his “pack pack” as his baby brother said it), and I held his hand and walked him to school. That day he took his first real step toward independence and in the years since he has eclipsed those steps as if he were running.
Today he took a giant leap toward independence. The last seven years we have been homeschooling, but this year we decided to make a return to traditional schooling. Our boys are attending Georgia Christian School. It is a private Christian School close to our house. Because of that, we are back on the normal school day schedule. One of the things that appealed to us about this school is that because the size is smaller, it has a family atmosphere. This morning his class had a breakfast at one of the students homes, and then they all rode together in a giant (think mini monster truck) pickup to the school where the entire school (students, parents, faculty) was waiting to welcome them and then enter together for chapel.
My baby boy, my little kindergardener, is now a senior. He is literally at the same stage in his life that I was when I met his mother. Physically he is a man, and mentally, emotionally, spiritually he is getting there quickly. Just like I did twelve years ago, this morning I walked him to school. The first day, of his last year of school. No I didn’t hold his hand, we fist bumped, but I did carry him in my heart.
