Make Him a Great Boy

In light of Elijah's upcoming birthday, I've spent time looking through an old journal, one containing the days immediately preceding and following his birth - just to revisit my thoughts and feelings as we prepared to welcome our second child.

Of course, we didn't know we were having a son because we never find out. But oh, when he arrived! If it be your blessing in life to have a son, then you know it is rich with promise, ripe with awakening: it's knowing there will come a day when he'll stop being yours and start being another's, that he'll grow to lead and protect and guard his world...and that you'll have had the profound gift of playing a part in growing that warrior, leader, guardian, and friend.

In that vein, here's some similarly impactive thoughts I came across in said journal pages recorded just after the birth of our middle child...theme of sons all!

If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs and blaming you, the world will be yours and everything in it - what's more, you'll be a man, my son.
-Rudyard Kipling

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to now when he is weak and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat and humble and gentle in victory.
-Douglas MacArthur

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.
-St. Augustine

You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.
-Walter M. Schirra, Sr.

Don't wait to make your son a great man - make him a great boy.
-Unknown

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study
mathematics and philosophy.
-John Adams

Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-Plato

Clever father, clever daughter; clever mother, clever son.
-Russian proverb