Dear Son,

Please allow me to continue my letter to you on manhood that I started last week.  I know it may still seem strange coming from your mom, but I encourage you to listen closely to the wisdom I’ve gathered from living life with a great man, growing older, and seeing how the world works.

Here we go:

• Learn to serve people.

Contrary to popular opinion, the greatest life is the life poured out for other people.  Jesus made this important distinction early in his ministry.  “Want to be great? Then learn to serve others,” he said.  This was strange advice coming from the God of the Universe.  One who could have come to take over but instead chose to wash the feet of 12 grimy guys, even the feet of the one who sold him out.

This is hard lesson for all of us , but if you want to be great, wash the feet of those people God has placed around you.

Let me translate this lesson to today:

Want a great job?  Then learn to serve people.  The more people you serve, the more money you make.

Remember this lesson when you work a job you hate.  We’ve all had to do this at one time or another.  It’s the most wonderful motivator for helping a man make change a necessary part of his life.  You can complain and quit, or you can find ways to outgrow that job by service to your employer.  I’ve seen the generation working out there and you can shine without too much trouble.

If you live to serve yourself, you’ve made a bad trade and you will be miserable, strapped in debt to a mortgage and forced to work a job you hate.

Choose to do what you love, and if you want more money, serve more people.  Jesus said, “To gain your life, you must be willing to lose it.”  Counter-culture, but oh, so true.  Serve others and you will have an opportunity to influence this world for good both through your life, and through your vocation.

• Speaking of money…(you knew I would get to this)…we need to talk.

Life—and your parents—don’t owe you everything.

We’ve worked hard to have a home, go to college, buy cars, and do things we love.  You need to learn the value of hard work so you can appreciate the value of money and things.  A man cannot bypass this life lesson, otherwise, he comes out smelling and looking much like those foolish frat boys at U of M who tore up a hotel because no one taught them to respect and value things by working for them.

You can’t have it all today.  Slow and steady wins the race in wealth building.  If you try, you will find yourself in a prison of debt and a slave to the lender.

Speaking of prison…don’t call me if you tear up a hotel and wind up in the slammer.  Boys like that need to sit in a jail cell until they figure out what it takes to be a real man.

• Choose your friends well.

Someone once said, “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.”   The apostle, Paul says, “Don’t be misled, bad company corrupts good character.”  (I Cor. 15:33)

It matters who you hang out with.

You can do a lot of things right, but if you choose the wrong people to hang with, it changes everything.  Your dad and I have spent years helping people get over the “wrong crowd.”  Unfortunately, unless they separate from the wrong crowd, they are rarely successful.

I spend a lot of time talking to you about physical safety, but I hope you realize the importance of protecting yourself and your future from the wrong people.

It is better to stand alone than to stand with a group of turkeys.

• Choose well who you will love forever.

After Jesus, it’s the most important and most consequential decision of your life.

Many will tell you divorce is an option. Hopefully, the power of making a covenant will run deep in your heart before you make it; nevertheless,  I will tell you that divorce does not end your connection, so choose well who you can afford to be married to and divorced from.

When selecting a spouse, you must realize you are selecting my future daughter.  Your responsibility will be not only to love her, care for her, and lay down your life for her, but also to lead her and yes, even stand up to her when she is wrong.

This will prove to be difficult, but a true man realizes that inaction will be more difficult in the long run.  You can lead in love (just like Jesus), or you can be lead around by the nose.  Let me add that a woman rarely respects someone who won’t stand up to her.

I speak from great experience on this— so man up, Son.  She needs you to have courage to do the right thing even if she refuses, and the hard thing, even when she rebuffs you.

You must stand before Jesus one day and we, (Jesus and me), both want to be proud of you.

Some may say I’m being too hard on you.  I say love compels me to let you become a man.  We both know that saying so many hard things is difficult for me because I can see by the world’s message what their reaction will be to your choices.

I know that you will struggle to be accepted by your peers.  You may even be ridiculed, you may be harassed, and you may feel very much alone.

But know this: there is great joy found in being different than the world around you.

I am rooting for you.  I believe you can stand out and stand up when the rest of the world is perpetually let down by those bad ideas deemed most popular.

And I also write these things because the boys of this world need to know they are called by God to make a difference and lead this generation in a great, wild, real world adventure. And it’s time for their spiritual mothers to begin telling them this again.  My heart aches at the loss in this world but I realize there is no greater cause than to shine the healing light of Christ with courage to this broken world.

Lean hard on Jesus during the difficult days, and trust Him to give you the strength to do what is never easy, but what is always good.

Love,

Mom