October 21st

Pride

            Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.  John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”  But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.  And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Matthew 3:13-17

             When are you proud of your Son or Daughter?  When they do well at school or in a race?  When they get through their therapy without complaining?  When they work incredibly hard to achieve a special milestone?

            God the Father has a couple of times in Scripture when He tells Jesus and others that He is proud.  The baptism account is early on in the story.  Jesus did not need to be baptized.  He was not carrying around a load of sin and guilt on His shoulders.  But being baptized meant stepping into the purpose that His Father had set out for Him.  It was an act of obedience and an act of faith and an act of unity: Jesus and the Father were on the exact same page about what direction His life was going and what His role in history was to be.  And witnessing all that, the Father beams and speaks out how pleased and how proud He is.

            I am proud of my son when he tries new things.  I am proud of him when he chooses to engage with his baby sister and plays with her.  I am proud when he cooks his own meals and shows off his culinary chops.  This spring he will graduate High School…and I am going to be a blubbering mess in the audience.  That walk across the stage is going to be filled with memories for me.  Memories of trying his first typical peer classroom.  Memories of escaping the preschool rooms when we warned everyone that he would escape the preschool room.  Memories of summer school.  Memories of hours of tear-filled math homework.  Memories of his first day of High School.  Memories of our class trips and confused teachers and lousy classmates and all the different steps that we have taken together.  I will remember all the IEPs where we were told that maybe a SPED classroom was as much as he could ever aspire to.

            I will remember it all and tears will stream down my face as my heart beats out of my chest.  My boy stepped into the places that were hardest.  He did the things that people thought that he could not.  He got knocked down and got back up and got knocked down again, over and over.  He took some steps into the place that God has made for him in this world.  Steps of Faith and steps of obedience and steps of hope.  He took them all and I will be glad to let the world know that I am his father and He is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

A moment to reflect:

When are you proudest of your child?