What Does It Mean To Be A Man? A Son’s Right of Passage.

We scramble near the suitcases.  Going round and round.  A few floors down, below the gate. All girls.  And his daddy whose son carries his name.  Proud.

Tiptoeing.  Looking.  His tall head can’t be found.

Internet down.  In the thick of Panama.  Haven’t talked to him.  In some time.  And it creeps in.  That lie, “Oh no, what if something happened?”

But then, his six foot-three sun kissed skin grows closer beyond the crowd.  And my mother’s heart. The heart all mother’s get, the day their child is conceived….

Starts beating, reattached, returns complete again somehow.

Man arms grip strong around this shrinking of motherhood.  And I find me grabbing for more.  My baby.  The child I once knew.

But, there is none.  

And while this nineteen-year-old was gone, he was building more than houses for the poor in Panama….he was building dreams, character, his manhood.

And now he is back, luggage lighter, a little less mother gripped, a little more….him.

And I think of how many God Partners are still waiting….Hearts failing.  For their child to come home.

Sitting with luggage of time, heartbreak, guilt, spinning thoughts painfully through sleepless nights….

And there is no epiphany, no great embrace, no ritual finding son returned. Changed.

Children.  Lost.  Sons.  Never coming home at all.

And I recall, my great-grandmother, sitting waiting for my grandfather to return.  And she waited. And waited. And waiting…..

But there was no embrace.  No holy gathering.  No, “I love you.”  She died not seeing Him again.

Every plane she saw, she would look up in the sky and think, “Maybe today is the day, maybe this is him?”

But her dream….lay empty.  Futile.  It was sad.  Really sad.

And what if God offered no amazing grace and the silence of cell phones never got reversed?  Long parting in jungles only growing….to forever?  Would the vines of time and regret and wonder suffocate this mother heart too?  

Many heads still lifted, eyes peering…..godly mothers, still praying…..missing children.  In a jungle, right here. Filled with vines.

Yet, I hear him strumming in his room.  Sip coffee with him and hear what a man he has become.  And it almost doesn’t seem fare.

Why does grace fall on some, yet somehow seem to miss passing others?

And maybe there isn’t some magic formula.  Maybe God only knows why some pull at heart strings a little harder.  Why some cut short and leave home and never come glowing and returning and embracing their mother.

While others may just take more time.  To find themselves in this identify-less world.

Still others become men out from under their covering.  Sitting, ears bend, listening…..To another.  Watching….And that is their indoctrination.  Their ceremony of significance.  Leading them to more than taking, big words with empty meaning….

But giving.  The giving that says I am a man, not a boy.

And it seems…..we live in a world starving, for manhood.  Starving for real men to step up, and into, and above a culture grinding men remorselessly, into insignificant.  Weakness.  Silence.

God driven.  Husband. Burdened.  For hurting men hiding in a mask of perfection pretense…..for religious purposes.  No one knowing….they are fighting.  For their lives.  For their families.  For meaning…

Until, it’s too late.

And when a foundation crumbles.  There is no easy repairing.  No sudden healing for the children.  Consequences of a culture caught up in uncertainty. Oblivion.

So, he is starting a men’s group for those such as these.  Men doing life.  Needing, someone to come alongside them.  Men craving friendship.  Fellowship.  Accountability.

Because when did we allow a license for men to be cut off, silenced, caught up, even gone….

Because it feels good?

And where did women stop the humbling.  That leads to exhalting, ex-honorating, respecting, esteeming, praying for the men in our sphere of influence?   So that childhood can be crucified and real men will be free to rise up without tensions?

And I want my son to live in a home not complacently, willingly, coddling him.  A life comfortable with the ease of a world justifying his apathy.  

I want him seeing…..House full.  Men searching.  Still looking.  Ever reaching.  For models.  Examples.

The Word…..keeping them, from all the lies tainting them.  From going under.  When many have not yet made their journeys, to the jungle….to rebirth.  

The discovering……of who they are?

Son hearing.  Men talking.  About their weaknesses.  Their issues.  So that he won’t have to leave home to know what it means to be a man.

He can watch his dad, and hear all his friends.  Hear the stories, seeing tears, really knowing……

What it is inside this world.  To be a man needing other men.

When growing up can be done easier in the jungle of Panama….than here in the U.S.A….

(Linking with Laura, Ann)