Happy Monday. It would seem to be a good place to restate what is going on. My son and I have begun a journey—a journey to manhood. It is my intent to offer some insight into our journey thereby possibly helping some father’s who are equally concerned about this very important time in their son’s life. I have decided to approach this journey as a time of discovery—for both my son and me. My reason for doing so is simply because everything I read or researched was some “packaged” outline of someone else’s journey. While I do not discount their journey, or their outline, I did not find it to be the challenge that I felt was/is important for my son. If you will, it cost me nothing—in the sense of my own effort.
That being said, it is not my intent to offer anyone such an outline. This is why I have intentionally been vague in writing down the things we have discovered. The intent is simply to offer someone an idea or perhaps a path, in which they may travel with their son.
Tomorrow—July 23, 2013—marks one month into our journey. The initial excitement has certainly faded away. The routine has certainly set in. Once again, for me this is hugely important because it is about life. Life isn’t an endless high. There are highs as well as lows. There are exciting times as well as mundane times. There is a mixture of each—that is what life is about. Everything I researched focused on “having fun” with your son. I certainly agree that having fun is important. However I also believe that being together in the fun—as well as not so fun—times are creating a much deeper foundation with my son. The late Zig Ziglar would often say that, “Repetition is the mother of learning, which makes it the father of action and the architect of accomplishment.” I believe that this daily repetition in both the fun and not so fun things about our journey will one day become cornerstones in my son’s life that will serve him well in his journeys as a man.
There are new discoveries that we are encountering, some of which I will write about today. We have adapted the movie “The Hobbit” as a model for our journey. This was done to create a fun adventure—an unexpected journey for the two of us to take together. I will gladly offer the outline to anyone who would like to see it. I do freely give it because as I stated earlier, it is not my intent to make this into yet another rite of passage manual.
To date my son has successfully memorized two verses of scripture, is working on number three and has identified six more verses to memorize. He has almost read the Old Testament book of Proverbs through one time—a task we often do together. He is regularly taking notes of ideas or thoughts that have come to his mind as he reads this Old Testament book of wisdom. We have formulated a general outline of the map of our journey including identifying several key features along the way.
In this initial leg of the journey we have named five enemies that will attempt to keep us from our journey. We have begun naming five ways to combat these enemies—like Gandalf and the dwarfs encountered in their journey.
The five enemies we have identified are:
1—demonic forces
2—thoughts
3—temptations
4—comfort
5—daily life
Demonic forces—like the necromancer—are those things that attempt to scare the very life out of you. They attempt to overwhelm you with how huge this task is, how uncertain the path seems to be.
Thoughts—like the orcs—that attempt to keep you from even trying. They hurl these thoughts at you like arrows, you will never succeed, or you haven’t ever completed anything you have attempted to do yet!
Temptations—like trolls—are those things that would lure you away from your path. You see a lake and long to go fishing or you your DS and yearn to watch a movie or play a video game.
Comforts are those things that seek to allure you back to home to your warm bed, your i- pad or your old way of doing things.
Daily life is wrapped around doing chores or school work or the everyday things that if not careful will give you excuses as to why you simply cannot pick up the necessary items of your journey. Once we have identified these things as enemies, it helps us have a different outlook on them and their place in our lives. Identifying them as enemies from the movie has helped my son see them as such.