...well, the first one I’m aware of, at any rate.
Hello to any who happen by. This is my first real blog post, written on a blog that is still being fine-tuned. The writing is still being fine-tuned as well, so patience would be appreciated. I feel that this is terribly self-indulgent, this blogging thing, but I like to write and “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. It seems to me also that the whole exercise is pointless if I’m not going to be open and candid, so that is the target, though one shouldn’t be surprised if I sometimes send a shaft into the weeds.
Back to my son.
As you noticed if you checked the “About Me” sidebar, my wife and I have 10 kids. 6 boys and 4 girls, ages 5 to 23. They are the delight of my life, bringing in equal measure much anxiety and much joy. That thought brings us right back to my oldest boy.
Boy 1 is an impressive young man, surpassing excellence in just about any venue he desires. I know, I know. I’m his dad. But I speak words of truth here, well-attested by others who know him who are NOT related. He is responsible and diligent, intelligent and skillful, caring and kind-hearted, with just enough bull-headedness mixed in to keep him from appearing TOO perfect. Just enough to keep him interesting/exasperating. Pretty good-looking too. So it’s no surprise at all that he’s attracted the attention of a girl, right?
I’m not handling this well at all.
She’s a super young lady, by all accounts Boy 1‘s equal in the good qualities mentioned above. A strong Christian from a good family, so it's no surprise that she's attracted his attention as well, right? I'm very happy that they have found each other. I’ve prayed from the very first that God would bring suitable mates for my boys and girls, and it certainly appears that He has done so here. At any rate her grandmother thinks so; she's the one that introduced them at church, with this very result in mind. So it's not like this whole situation snuck up on me. And if their relationship should grow even deeper, why I’d be pleased as punch. But I’m not ready to let go just yet. And it’s killing me.
This blog is called Arrows in Flight, and unless you’re hopelessly illiterate you’ve surmised by now that my children are the arrows. An archer will retrieve his arrows after a shot, and unless the shaft is damaged beyond repair, reuse them. And so it is, sort of, with our children. We raise them carefully, making sure they are straight and true, well-fletched with heads on straight, and then when they are ready we launch them. Practice shots at first, safe and simple, but then longer and more difficult. And with each shot comes the knowledge that someday they will go where they cannot be retrieved and replaced in the quiver. It’s supposed to be that way. They will go off, the arrow becomes the archer who finds a bow, and together they build a quiver and begin to stock it with arrows of their own, to carefully craft and build and launch. It is my hope above almost all else that my arrows will fly straight and true and find whatever target our God has planned for them.
But I hear in that love poem (nicely done, btw, but that’s to be expected from Boy 1) the echo of the twang of the string, the one that will send him forever from my quiver and off into the wild blue to start his own life with some one else. I am filled with joy and sadness, again in equal measure. That this is The Way It's Supposed To Be does nothing to ease my anxiety. On the other hand, it does nothing to lessen my Joy either; I'm enormously proud and happy at the man he's become, and I pray that God will bless his life as richly as He has blessed mine. I pray that God will someday bless Boy 1 with a Boy 1 of his own. That day will come, when it comes, too soon. And not soon enough.
I love you my son. I hope I have served you well. Fly true.
P.S. I remembered this from a book I read some time ago. It seems appropriate to include it here.
"Let a man, an arrow, and an answer each go straight. Each is his own witness. God is judge."
Eastern proverb, as quoted in Hira Singh: When India Came to Fight in Flanders by Talbot Mundy
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