1 Friday Favorite: Eighteen

One Friday Favorite today. I am officially now the mother of adult children. The baby turned 18 on Tuesday. Let's be clear that whoever decided that 18 years old meant "adult" didn't read the science on the development of the pre-frontal cortex, but here we are. It still "hits different", as the young 'uns would say.

10 years ago I started writing - rambling really - in this space about life and Jesus and cute boots and lipstick and how terrible I was am at cooking and baseball and basketball and prayers lifted up from the steaming metal bleachers of a thousand and one ballparks. I mostly wrote about my children. It's weird to me that way back then with three little boys underfoot I found more time to write. I wonder if maybe I just needed the outlet more then. I don't think so. Because mothering these children hasn't ended yet. All the thoughts and all the prayers and all the worries and all the trying to prepare them for the path without preparing the path for them still rumble around in my brain begging to be released. Maybe I write a bit less about them because their stories are becoming more their stories and not mine. *Big Sigh*. This is the way it is to supposed to be. I know. I know. I know.

Anyway, no Amazon finds today. No recipes. No books. No songs. No beauty products that are giving me delusional dreams about turning my face back into something I recognize. Just a look back at a little boy and the way he inspired his mama to tap out words on a laptop for anyone and no one. Or maybe just for her so that one day she would look back and remember a day when eight years old seemed impossible. And 18 was a lifetime away.

Originally posted November 8, 2012

The doctor said it for the third time:  "It's a boy!"

I giggled and thought, "Well, no problem. I got this."
Then I took a look at your bright red face that matched your bright red head.
Think again, sister.

I wondered which one you would you be like.  The first or the second.  But you are just you . . . the third. You are the exclamation point at the end of the sentence that is our family.
 

You are you, all on your own.  Red hair flaming.  Freckles popping.  Littlest, bittiest nose we have ever seen. 

You are you.  Sliding the kitchen chairs to the counter to climb, so that we had to bungee cord them together under the table. Waking at the slightest noise so that we had to put the sound machine on high and the bathroom fan on at the same time. Throwing the biggest, baddest, loudest tantrums we had ever seen.

You are you. Starting out as their bat boy and now giving those big boys a run for their money with so many pitches and hits and baskets and catches. You throw and you shoot and you run and you tackle. Those brothers won't let you travel or double dribble or have more than three strikes. They won't go easy on you and they will make you wait your turn. They are the meanest of the mean and the bestest of the best. They will make you strong and brave and tough because they love you so fiercely.

You are just you. You are not just one more boy. You are one of three, but like no other. You challenge my patience the most. You wrap your arms around me the tightest.  When you bounce out of the school doors, you smile the biggest. You cling the hardest to Daddy's hand. You bring new space to my heart that was already bursting full, so that everyday I think it will crack open at the seams because of how I adore you, my littlest love.

You desperately want to just "get big." When I get big, I'll do this. When I get big, I'll do that.
Once, when you were about three, we sat outside the church nursery and you clung to me and cried that you didn't want to go. We were about to be late for the service and then you made sure of it.  You looked at us with tears streaming and asked, "Mommy and Daddy, when you get wittle, will you come to Sunday School with me?"

Oh, how I wish we could stay wittle together, my wittle one. But you keep getting big.  And you must.  Because our God has big things in store for you, wittle boy . . . a big, shiny future for you. It's just for you and it as blinding as the glow of those bright red curls.

Happy 8th birthday, Drew Christopher.  I love you to pieces.