My Biggest Blessing

His hands hold his pencil tight as he concentrates, eyes slighlty squinted and chewing on his bottom lip.  He traces the head on the posterboard, then takes his scissors and starts to cut.  "Mom, we should be using safety scissors.  Are you sure you don't want to help me?" He laughs... and I do, too.  Me, the person who could never cut a straight line...

He already knows what he wants to draw, so I leave him in the room as I go pack up my office for fall break. So much to do over break, the realization that time will once again fly and I'll be back at the computer entering grades and sorting through my messy life... and he draws at the table as I gaze through the doorway at him.

His hair is spiked up in front, but it's cut close to his ears, and I realize how old he looks.  He's wearing a black shirt covered up with a blue "vest", a tee-shirt he cut the front out of.  The weekend before we had laughed at the table... "What are you wearing?" Kami had exclaimed.  "A vest." He replied matter of factly. "Um, no..." said the fashion police.  "That's just a cut up tee-shirt."  But it's not.  It's what he made of it...

He's drawing the symbols now, a heart for kindness and a smiley face for happiness and a spear... "Maybe I should draw a wolf to show independence..." A wolf, who travels in a pack.  "Dad, stop singing," he said when he was three. "I'm like a wolf.  I walk alone." 

So independent and unique and... mine.  I'm amazed by him daily.  Today, he gave a presentation on his Ramo drawing, an open-minded portrait that he did all by himself.  He's growing up, I'm realizing, and it won't be too long until he's at college giving presentations and writing papers and making new friends and just being Caleb...

Thank you, God, for my biggest blessing.  I'm so grateful you chose me to be his Mama.