Future Management

To you, my son, as you look to make sense of the doors that open and close in front of you.

Time management. It's been heavy on you lately, hasn't it, my son? I think of how I watched you last night on the field. You are section leader now, in a band where that means almost as much in terms of responsibility as many small town band directors experience as a career. So now you have sitting on the scales this choice. Do you go with this school group--where you have over the years grown into the position of leadership, a responsibility that is the highest you can know as a student--go with them to the competition in Atlanta? For you know, with all humility, that your being there is a make-or-break component for your section as they have learned to look to you for heart and soul and skill. Or do you look at them as a door soon to close behind you and instead choose to attend the audition slated for the same weekend, the audition that would secure you a spot in a competitive marching group that could follow your time with this group and improve your personal skills and future opportunities? In choices like these, we say so much more about ourselves than we ever realize.

Last night, I thought on these things for your sake as we went walking across the field with you for Senior night. Standing there, feeling the chill on my thighs and in my ears, squinting in the unnatural brightness of the stadium lights with the inky black of the night sky above them. Seeing all the school colors flying on scarves and ribbons and banners. These were memory-making for me. But more was the honor of meeting other parents...ones who had more time than I did for doing volunteer work with the band...and hearing these other parents say, "I just love your son." Multiple times I heard this. You have established a good reputation for yourself, a reputation of honor and integrity and reliability with even the adults; and I felt honored to be the woman crossing that track, carrying that mother-rose, as your mother. So I know you will do the right thing, and if necessary lay aside your own dreams as you continue to do the duty you have already accepted and shown the strength to shoulder well.

So if you'd like some wisdom from the one who has gone with you through all these growing-up days of your young life, I'd say this: cling tightly to the following perspective regarding the greatest honor, the greatest reward in the end, the one that will last: that highest reward will not come to you based on which group gets this one seminal weekend in your life. The reward is not in the medals or trophies or plaques. The reward is not even in the references you can put in your portfolio as you seek the favor of various colleges. These rewards are passing. They lead into the future, but will all ultimately end. All could be replaced by equally good paths into the future. There is, however, one reward-path that has no alternative route, but is often missed because to many it is an invisible road. This road is the one that leads to the lasting reward, the one that you'll find if you use this opportunity to prove yourself to actually be the man you seem to be growing to be. You prove here and now much about your future calling by the choice that you make: the choice that tips the scale in actual events, showing whether you will favor yourself or favors others above yourself.

Since I know you will make the right choice in this, however, I do not particularly pray over that choice-making moment. Here is what I pray: the proof of your heart that goes beyond the choices that you make. For it is not just in the choice you make, but in the heart the lingers after that you really prove your metal. Even insane men can do their duty in serving the needs of those around them. But few are the men who will do their duty and not count the cost as a loss, but as a privilege. May you be given such clarity of vision. This is my prayer for you, my first-born!