Languages of Love

Tonight is the last high school athletic event at home I will ever attend to watch my son compete...After today, he only has two more track meets and his high school career is over.  Every year since he was 6, our years have been marked by the passing of sports seasons and always the anticipation of the next one coming up.  Even though there may be college seasons to come, we will not be riding to and from the game and figuring out where to eat, or asking him if he wants to ride the bus or come home with his mom and I.  He won't come home and crash on the couch or complain about starving because there's no food in the cupboard before heading out with a friend.  This is the last time he and his sister will ever compete for the same team and cheer each other on as only siblings can do.

I'm sure many people have looked at our family over the years and thought that sports were too important to us.  And I'm equally sure that there were times that they were.  But sports provided a language to communicate the life lessons that were important.  They gave a context to developing character and integrity.  Giving your all, sacrificing for a goal, being gracious when people were laying blame at your feet and humble when those same people were heaping praise upon your head; sports gave an opportunity to communicate these lessons.  Sports gave us the opportunity to discuss how we should act when those in authority acted poorly, or wronged us, and it provided a real life struggle to "when is it OK to quit?".  They gave us a platform to discuss using your gifts with all your might because they were gifts from God.  Sports gave us a common language, like the family that camps, or the one that hunts, or any other shared passion.  But now I need to learn another language.  Because this season is coming to an end, and the next season is soon here.

Sadly, as a father, if you do it right, there will come a time when your son no longer wants to speak your shared language.  He will begin to yearn to find his own voice, struggle to find his own place.  He will speak of wanting to leave, exasperated by your mere presence.  Your attempts to connect using the old words will be seen as meddlesome and invasive.  And it will hurt. 

As my son prepares to leave for college, he has one foot planted at home, in the security of the past, and another foot stepping out into the unknown.  My most heartfelt desire is that the the lessons he learned within our home will provide him firm footing.  And to do that, he must find his own voice, a voice that resonates with the strength of his own convictions. 

So today, I have one foot firmly planted in the security of the past.  I still feel the solid weight of his little  body, exhausted from play and now sleeping in my arms.  I close my eyes and see him spot my car from a distance and race along the sidewalk to jump into my arms as soon as I pull up.  I recall sitting up throughout the nights as his broken leg gave him no rest, and sitting with him on the side of our bed as his broken heart did the same.

But I also have one foot stepping out into the unknown.  I am at times shaken by the effort required to let go of the past and give him up to his future.  I sometimes long for the comfort of our old language and resent the awkwardness that comes with learning a new one.  But then I look at him and see him as he is, a man with a heart for those less fortunate, a desire to lift them up and show them love, to see their value in the way he values them.  And then I realize, that is a voice worth hearing, a language worth learning.