You probably haven’t noticed (because hey, we have a lot of kids) but Jack has been missing most of this summer. He’s been in our hearts, he’s been on our minds… but he has rarely been in our actual midst. The reason is simple: Jack has spent the bulk of his summer throwing himself headlong into the things he loves best. In other words, Civil Air Patrol, and all that it entails.
I freely admit that I’m a little wistful about the fact that this, the last summer before his senior year of high school, has been so full of things that have taken him away. If I had my way, after all, he’d be parked right here beside me on the couch, taking up way too much room and reading an obscure book on the weaponry developed in some war in the 18th Century.
But boys don’t become men that way. Boys become men through the going, and the doing, and the testing of the mettle God has placed in those growing hearts. Boys who sit on couches playing video games, waiting on their Mommas to do their laundry and their Daddies to bring home a paycheck and the world to get a little softer so they don’t have to work so hard don’t become men.
Men are forged in the fires of the hard things, the emotional things, the things that look way too big until they are in your rearview mirror. Boys, I have learned, don’t fall into manhood. They don’t simply “grow” into it, either. The process of maturing into a man seems to be wrapped around clawing your way through your own personal battle and proving to yourself that you have the stamina and the heart and the courage to be both as strong and as gentle as this world needs.
The fight doesn’t look the same for every boy. And it doesn’t have to be physical. It’s often not some show of bravado or macho at all. Maybe it’s overcoming a truly terrible childhood to become a leader, or conquering a learning disability to soar through college. These things are hurdles every bit as high as literal ones, and craft a character worthy of the label “man.”
So while I want my son home, here, safe, laughing with me over the punchlines in Marvel movies and drinking gallons of sweet tea… I know he’s doing the thing he needs to do. He’s learning what it means to make commitments and keep them, how to set personal goals and exceed them, how to work alongside people whose personalities make you cringe, and how to best shine for Christ even in an environment where He isn’t the focus.
Jack returned home last night, and he leaves again Saturday. We won’t see him again until the last day of the month, at which point he’ll rest up a few days before diving into his senior year. He’ll spend the fall mostly devoted to Dual Enrollment classes and waiting on news of college acceptances and scholarships, on pushing himself physically for PT tests and on continuing his role on the command staff for his CAP squadron. From there, life will snowball towards the spring, when I will hand him his diploma and cry. That handover will signal his flight from our homeschool. We’ll still be here, of course. But he will be stepping more firmly into the future God has for him. He will be journeying, fully then, into manhood.