What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

For the thousandth time, I looked at my oldest child, now almost 11, and asked him this question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s a question I ask both of my children on a regular basis. I want to encourage them and to think and set goals. Like any parent, I want the best for my children.

And today was no different as he uttered his response. “I want to be a lumberjack,” he replied with a cheesy grin. Although the cheesy grin, as with most children, did not indicate that he was joking. In his mind, he really did want to be a lumberjack.

Last week he aspired to be a leaf sucker upper, the big garbage truck that comes around the neighborhood with a huge vacuum tube to collect the remnants of the change of season.

The week before? A ferry boat driver so that he could meet new people as they traveled back and forth to Mackinaw Island.

Perhaps my disappointment again this time around comes from the fact that my youngest, since the age of 3, has wanted to be a NICU nurse. She eats, sleeps, and dreams of the day that she will finish nursing school and be able to walk in to the hospital and work with “these size babies” she calls them as she holds up Pampers that the NICU babies wear.

Perhaps I want him to answer with doctor or lawyer or even pro football player, and when he doesn’t, I’m hurt that he doesn’t see the potential that he has in his life. He doesn’t see what I see and doesn’t think that he has the ability to be something amazing one day. It comes back to expectations are premeditated resentments and when I don’t get the answers I expect, I am resentful. Resentful of what is always what I ask myself and the answer that I keep coming up with is that I’m resentful of myself; that I can’t give him the confidence; that I can’t do it for him.

So each week, I continue to work with him, talk with him, and encourage him to seek out people and ask them what they do for a living, in hopes that he’ll set higher goals for himself.

The reality of it is, if he is leaf sucker upper, he’s going to be a great one. The reality of it is, I can only do what I can do and that’s support him and show him what’s out there and love him. The reality of it is that he’s going to leave this house in 7ish years and hopefully do what the Lord has called him to do.

And I? I will be proud of him. I will love him no matter what he chooses to do with his life and I’ll be the first one to call him to come and get my leaves.

Until next time…

Heather