Wilderness Boy

Happy 12^th birthday Sullivan!

You officially outweigh me by about 10 pounds now. You are centimeters away from passing me in height, and your knowledge of algebra and geography has surpassed mine (but let’s be honest, that’s no great feat).  You have really come into your own this year—riding your bike to school, making your own lunches, and the occasional “meal” (ramen noodles), completing daily chores, keeping track of all your assignments without the parental harassment. You took the leap into adolescence without hesitation and without difficulty–it’s almost disconcerting.

Or it would be, if you weren’t still that same little boy, who cried when he saw his mother crying at some awful movie (House of Sand and Fog maybe?) You took my crumpling face in your impossibly tiny hands, and dove headlong into the deepening pools of sorrow, longing and fatigue you found rallying in the hollows there. I will never forget the profound light of love and tenderness that fell across your face in that instant—the way you stuck out your lip in imitation, began taking great heaving breaths, then followed it all up with the sudden liberation of big, fat tears.

You didn’t understand why I was crying, your knowledge of grief was, (thankfully) pitifully incomplete.  You didn’t need to know, or understand or even agree, but you had to join. You had to comfort, you had to share the burden, you had to help bring healing.

Ten years later, you are still carrying out the mission of that two year old boy.  It seems like you are drawn by some innate gravitational force, to brokenness, injustice, and ugliness. A lot of times it worries us. You are so sensitive, so hard on yourself, carrying the unbelievable weight of meeting everyone’s needs and surpassing everyone’s expectations. Every time you say: “I’m just so disappointed in myself” my heart breaks. How do we make you see what we see? How can we convince you that you are the most amazing, talented, interesting, creative, compassionate kid we know—and you’re ours!! We couldn’t be more proud of you if you built a rocket ship out of legos and flew to the moon.

Sometimes it sees like we have sent you out into the wilderness.  For all help we have given you, for as well as we’ve prepared you for the pressures and the hardships of this life, you could be wandering aimlessly through the desert.  It’s a frightening and isolating thought. But then I remember that God causes springs of water to open up, even in the desert, and he sends angels to minister along the most desolate pathways.  We are never alone—even the wilderness, the very habitation of loneliness and dread, jackals and serpents—is inhabited by God.

And God is the one who created you and fashioned you with the compassion of Jeremiah and the zeal of John the Baptist. He is the one who holds your life in the palm of his hand and directs your steps.  He is the One who has commissioned one so young with the burden of restoring what has been stolen, straightening what has been twisted and perverted, loving the unlovely, and taking the damaged, tear-stained face of the world between his hands and blessing it.

As a mother I wish I could spare you the slightest acquaintance with the sorrow and the suffering Jesus himself blessed by word and deed, but I have witnessed firsthand how God has used pain and rejection and failure in your life as the very vehicles of his grace and blessings.  You may not have many trophies for athletic achievements, but you have something far greater. You have a heart that is touched by affliction, and a courageous spirit that leaps into action. You are inventive, compassionate, faithful, eager, and undaunted by your youth or the obstacles put in your path. My great prayer and longing for you is for you to discover what an amazing human being you are, what a joy you are to all who know you, and what unfathomable riches await you as you grow in your love for Christ and others. I love you.

Happy Birthday my darling boy!!