On My Son’s 16th Birthday…

On this, my son’s (my baby’s) sixteenth birthday, I just want to take a moment to reflect on how he has blessed my life. From the moment he was born and he made that unique little cry, “Ma-a-a-a-a-a-a,” (yes, he did cry with an ‘m’ at the beginning, like a little lamb) he won my heart and challenged me with his own singular eccentricities and distinctive personality. He is so different than the girls and has fascinated me with his unpredictable nature. Always verbal (his scores for rhetoric have consistently been in the 90s) he has amazed me with his perspective on things, even from the time he was a toddler. He is a thinker, with a depressive bent (not unlike his mother). He is a bit self-absorbed (not unlike his mother). He is creative and fun and inventive. He can be charming and charismatic but can also be shy. He is an introvert but he needs people. We’re a lot alike in temperament but very unalike in interests.

He is a good person, though, and I have every faith that he will make me proud. I believe that he will be an adult of good character. I have planted a seed of the gospel in him that I continue to feed and water as opportunity presents and I pray that God will harvest that seed so that my son will be a good servant to God and be able to avoid so many of the pitfalls that I encountered in my life and so many pitfalls that seem to be confronting this generation that my generation didn’t have to face.

Mothering my son has been an entirely different experience than mothering my daughters. Mothering the girls came so much more naturally. But mother my son has been a growth experience for me and has offered a whole different set of rewards and lessons. 16 years has been an awfully long time. So much has happened in this stretch. He has lived through so much for a teen. It’s no wonder he is so often like an adult. He has had to weather a lot for his age. But he truly is a blessing to me and God knew what He was doing when he sent this wonderful little being into our lives!