Dear Joe

Dear Joe,

I look at you and see a boy who knows for sure that he is a fast runner, a good leader, a smart thinker.

At nine, your only kryptonite is math, but somehow your weakness with numbers seems to make everything else more charming. You love to play and love to win, but you love for everyone to win. Victory at the expense of a friend’s self esteem is not an item in your particular bag of tricks, though I think it might make you better at sports if it were.

I love your spark, your joy, your refusal to – almost ever –  get angry or mean. I love that you believe in the goodness of the people around you and you believe in the goodness in you.

But I wonder (and this is where the mom road gets a little rough)…

…who will be the first to bend your belief system? Someone will do it. Someone will make sure you understand that you aren’t that great or that fast or that kind. Someone will disregard your sparkling storytelling abilities and define your intelligence by your struggle with long division.

A boy who hasn’t been well-loved will want to become a winner by making you a loser. An insecure girl will make herself feel beautiful by convincing you that you are ugly. It will happen and I can’t stop it because our whole planet lies under the sway of the heartache of sin.

And sometimes – as crazy as it sounds – I am tempted to pave the way for the breaking. Sometimes I feel like I should prepare your heart for the sting of reality. To soften the blow of that moment when you will feel the rush of the wind, only to discover it’s someone passing you by; winning your race. I wrestle with the dueling desires to “build-you-up” and “let-you-down-easy” and so I ask for wisdom.

Wisdom that keeps me from speaking words that would define or destroy.

Wisdom that helps you find both your breaking and building in arms of Jesus.

Wisdom, to hold you close and launch you freely into a world that isn’t kind, but so deeply needs someone a lot like you.

So I stand in the shadows of your indefatigable optimism and I pray that when the day comes that you discover that there are those who cannot cheer you on, no matter how much they may secretly want to; you will hold tightly to the knowledge that there are those who always will. No matter what.

I love you more than words can say,

Mom (and I think I speak for Dad, Corey & Whit, Tori & Tess as well)