Live Like That

My Caleb is something else.  He's funny and smart.  I am amazed by him every day of my life. Sometimes it's a good amazement... sometimes, not so much.  Tonight, it was the good kind.

There are days when we fight like cats and dogs.  Caleb is stubborn and can be very sassy.  He likes to call me "Woman" and sometimes he means it in a not so nice way.  He doesn't like to do homework and he likes to stay at home and watch TV, which totally contradicts my lifestyle of run, run, run...  He gets mad at me and I get mad at him and we tend to explode.  I'm trying to work on this.  I know he gets a bad temper from both me and his Dad and I can't get mad at him when it's my fault, right?  Especially when you consider that he's seeing me model some of the very same behaviors that I'm quarreling at him about. 

Even with his temper and his sassiness, he's still a great kid.  He is compassionate and caring most of the time, and he is just too funny.  He looks at life in his own unique way.  He's a whiz at technology... any kind.  Yesterday, he got a notecard from his teacher talking about how fun it was to have him in the classroom and how caring he is.  He got the biggest smile on his face, and my heart stretched just a little bit to think that I might have had just a little bit to do with that... let's face it, it takes a village, and Caleb has a very supportive village: Grandparents and great-grandparents and aunts and uncles and great-aunts, and all of these girls he calls his sisters...

Anyway, back to today... we had a really good evening together.  He went and hung out with my Grandma Na while I went to a parent meeting for the academic team.  I'm always flabbergasted by how mellow Mamaw is with Caleb (and Dylan and Mason and Landry...) If we had done some of the stuff they do when we were little, Jen, Glenn and I would be cutting our own switch, or at the very least sitting on opposite ends of the couch (which is hard when there's three of you.  Which is why we would usually catch Mamaw with her back turned and high-tail it down to Jen's, leaving Glenn to face her wrath... we really were mean cousins sometimes...) After I got finished, we went to McDonalds and just had a good conversation.  After church, Caleb cranked up his Ipod in the car.  He is like me and has an eclectic taste in music... but tonight it was all about Francesca Battestelli and the Sidewalk Prophets, who are going to be in town tomorrow night. He likes to tease me about "This is the Stuff", which really could have been written for me, dealing with lost car keys and lost phones and running late.  We sang it at the top of our lungs, and then he selected one by the Sidewalk Prophets.  "This is my favorite one, Mom.  Let's sing it, he said." 

Tears came to my eyes (and are right now as I'm typing this) as I listened to my little boy, who will quickly become a man belt out these words.  I know he doesn't know exactly what they mean, but then again, maybe he does.  Maybe that's why sometimes he will give up money so someone else can have something or why he prays so fervently for people he knows that are in trouble.  Maybe that's why he wanted to give the little girl the skateboard at Christmas time when Mission of Hope came last year.  Sure, he can be selfish, but I'm thinking maybe he gets it a little... "I want to live like that
And give it all I have So that everything I say and do Points to You If love is who I am Then this is where I'll stand Recklessly abandoned Never holding back."

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he gets old he won't depart from it... (my paraphrase).  When he gets old, he'll live like that... Lord, this is my prayer.