They love what we love

Our kids copy and amplify our vision

Yesterday morning, my roommate, who happens to be my 15-year-old son, was simply sitting there on the couch, not looking at his phone, just thinking.

Like a psychopath.

I asked him what was on his mind. He looked at me and gave me that grin that, to anyone who doesn’t know him, might be taken as, well, odd. That boy has a lot going on in there at any given time. He always has. He goes deep.

Today, he’s bored. It’s summer, so school (even homeschool) is out, and we live in a neighborhood that could not be more useless for an active young man. When I saw him sitting there on the couch, my heart broke. Again. Whatever the events that led to this time of divided family and weird living situations, I take full responsibility. His lack of activity—and opportunity—falls on me.

I didn’t want to give him another, “Just hold on—it will all work out” speech. They never really land anyway. So, I shared with him my vision. The thing that keeps me going. It’s more of an aspiration. A whispered hope. A thing that if I ever obtain it, I’ll know I’ve reached “base.”

But I didn’t speak it. I drew it.

I grabbed a marker and got to work on the big whiteboard in our living room. (This place is less a home and more of an incubator of entrepreneurial projects.) I drew—or attempted to draw—the vision in my mind of what success will look like. It’s not pavement-clawing supercars or 16-room mansions. No. For me, particularly in this stage of life and after all that has happened, success is a quiet cabin on a mountain somewhere. It’s surrounded by green forest and hard, gray outcroppings of stone and, ideally, a path leading down to a sandy beach near an ocean.

It’s a high place. A vast place. A wild place.

It’s a place where I can read and think and be with God.

This is what I sketched:

My mom is an artist. Her father was an architect. Her brother is an architect.

I am artistically retarded when it comes to hand-drawing things. Obviously.

When I got home from work tonight, my son had taken that vision and cleaned it up. Here’s his vision:

I know—I’m just the dad. I’d be amazed if he painted a rock purple and put googly eyes on it.

Except…

He took my vision and made it his—and made it better.

He was finishing up as I walked in around 9:30 last night. He looked up, blew the charcoal off the picture, and said, “I made something.”

I’d struggled to sketch my vision with four different colors, none of which represented nature very well. (Hot pink?) He sketched it with one—a graphite #2 pencil. I don’t know where he learned the technique that turned hard gray lines into diffused gradients, or how re used it to represent sunlight. Shadows? I didn’t even think of that. Somehow the shadows and textures of the mountain valley register somewhere under the consciousness.

He took my crude vision and refined it. Elevated it.

I’m reminded of something I heard frequently in the brief years when my wife and I worked together to build a homeschool consultation business. Anyone in that space will know what I’m talking about:

“They will love what you love.”

I’m reminded of this every day. Our kids model our behavior—the good and the bad. My oldest loves SciFi movies. My oldest girl loves books. My youngest…Not sure yet. I think she loves love. They all have an annoying sarcastic wit, and there’s no doubt where that comes from.

Fortunately, they are seeking the Good, True, and Beautiful, too. In their own ways. Their fledgling beliefs, however, rest on our love of the transcendent.

K is still working on his life’s vision. He is only 15, after all. But for now, he loves what I love. One might say he refined and elevated it. After all, he loves mountains and oceans, too. A quiet, secluded cabin? What’s not to love?

He’s still bored, but the vision took root. He knows we’re not just struggling to exist, but to reach that very attainable place where we can take a break—maybe forever—from the strife and division in our life.