The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity in the Becker household. We’ve attended parties and prize nights and championship meets. We’ve offered words of encouragement in the face of exams and packed up dorm rooms. And we have crossed another threshold as a family.
Last Friday, William graduated from high school!
He soon heads into his first full-time summer job, and then a gap year (or, as they now seem to call it, a bridge year) of—hopefully—an internship in an area of local politics, a Spanish immersion program, and some international travel. Then, fifteen months from now, he heads to college.
As a graduation gift, we found a wooden box on Etsy with a map and his monogram printed on the outside. The map contains both the town where he grew up and the town where he went to school. It arrived, and I looked at it with no ability to recognize either place. It was all a bunch of incomprehensible squiggly lines and oblong shapes. William looked at it for all of a few seconds and pointed out the bodies of water associated with the two towns and the roads that connected them. He knows how to read a map. He knows how to find the route from one place to another. He knows where he is and where he wants to go.
Inside the box, Peter and I both placed letters. I won’t share most of what I had to say, but I will share one section. I wrote about what I want for him—friendship and learning and community and an awareness of God’s presence. And I wrote about what I don’t want for him:
“I want you never to experience hurt or heartbreak, hardship or loss. I want you to get all the internships you ever apply for and never experience rejection. I want you never to feel lonely, or confused, or sad. But as we send you out into a bigger world of opportunity and exploration, I know that you will feel and experience all of those things. I cannot protect you from them. Who you already are will help you navigate the hardships that come. And the hardships themselves will help you become who you are designed to be. Like the trees that only grow stronger in dry seasons and hard winds, I know you will continue to put down deep roots. Those roots will burrow into the love that will not only hold you through the hard times, but also grow you up into the person you are already becoming, a man of wisdom and courage, kindness and thoughtfulness, love and grace.”
We celebrate what he has already done. We celebrate who he is and who he is becoming. And we look forward—with both fear and excitement—to all that lies ahead.
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Amy Julia Becker desires to challenge assumptions about the good life, proclaim the inherent belovedness of every human being, and help us envision and build a world of belonging where everyone matters. Amy Julia invites people to reimagine the good life through her writing and speaking on disability, faith, and culture. She is the author of To Be Made Well, White Picket Fences, Small Talk, and A Good and Perfect Gift. She is a guest opinion writer for national publications and hosts two podcasts: Take the Next Step and Reimagining the Good Life. Becker is a graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv). She is a member of the Disability Ministry Network and the Alliance for Disability Justice and Ethics in Reproductive Genetics. She lives with her husband and their three children in western Connecticut.
