I want to tell you today about a beautiful boy I know. He is tender-hearted and hard-headed. If I said black he would say white. He leans towards anxiety, is a flaming extrovert, yet is hurt when he is rejected for being rigid. Realistically, he wishes to rule the world.
He can’t.
He is too cool to have a mom in public but likes to be tucked in at night. Although he stretches towards the teen years, he is yet a child. He yawns as I rub his bare back – I speak sweet words. He lifts his heavy head to give me a lippy kiss.
He is beloved.
He is handsome, gangly, growing, private, unsure and overconfident. I’m trying to love him, influence his thinking about himself and others while trying to feed him as he races out the door without a coat.
When this beautiful boy gets hurt, he shuts down and hurts others. When he has hurt others it is incredibly difficult for him to accept responsibility. It takes time, toughness, topped with tenderness, acceptance infused with consequences for him to come around.
He does.
Perspective taking remains very hard for him, a black and white thinker – the world must be as he sees it.
It isn’t.
Stubborn though he be, kindness runs like a deep river through the veins that mine once fed. I watched him the other day, that man cub I bore. His long legs too big for the little library chair while a pile of books totters on his leggy lap. A younger boy walks by, comments in his reading selection. The man cub offers the smaller one a book, he declines. “Beautiful is he,” I think.
He is.
I teach him, in age-appropriate ways how to treat and see women. He knows not the full story of his Mumma’s sorrows – someday he will. I will tell him in time, in bite-size packages about abuse, vulnerability, brokenness, and power. A powerful person himself, he must learn to wield his power well.
He must.
I trace my fingers over the outline of his slender back, curled into his soft blanket, wriggling closer at the sound of my soft song. May love imprint all over you beautiful boy – so that not only will you know it when you see it, you will know how to give it.
He will.
I am absolutely mad about him 100% of the time and mad with him 50% of the time. This beautiful boy is my only son. He teaches me daily what it means to love tenaciously and lead strongly while honoring choice endlessly. He also schools me on his father. It is written that “when you see the Son, you see the Father.”
It is so.
I love that beautiful boy, that man, and the man he will become.