I couldn't find a more appropriate book to read during football practice! The book explains how much God intended for men and boys to be adventurous, and to seek out danger. I'm reading all of this while watching my kids run into other kids (they say it's flag football, but someone always gets knocked to the ground). It has helped me to understand the boys a lot more, seeing how this was God's design.
Chris, in particular, is a very rough and tumble boy. He's told me several times that he's a "professional" and I shouldn't worry. He loves it when he sees fear shoot across my face at the mere mention of one of his stunts. He has a very distinctive cackle as he laughs at the thought of giving me grey hair.
We were on our way to his football game on Saturday, when he saw my book sitting on the seat next to me. On the cover, it shows a man jumping from one peak to another, with a very deep ravine in between. That of course caught Chris' eye, and he asked me, "What is this book!?". I told him that it's a book about how God made boys to be adventurous. He asked me what exactly I meant by that, and I summed it up by telling him, "Well, God made boys to want to do dangerous stuff. He made them so that they want to explore and play games to win."
At the mention of the words "do dangerous stuff" his eyes lit up. I knew at that point I had opened a can of worms! We got to his game early, and he had some time to play on the playground before his teammates showed up. A few minutes into his playing, he was climbing at a height that really made me nervous.
"Be careful!" I cautioned him.
"C'mon Mom! You said yourself...God MADE me to be dangerous!".
Oy!
The rest of the morning, he was reveling in the fact that all of his courage to do dangerous stunts was how he was designed. He told me, as often as he could, while performing risky positions, that he was made to do this stuff. He started to tell me that he was born to do this, and he stopped himself mid-sentence.
"I was born....no....MADE to do dangerous stuff!" He seemed to have an understanding, deep inside him, that God had knit him together for adventure. It wasn't something he learned, but it was a part of how he was made. It wasn't something that happened after he was in this world. It was something that was a part of his world.
With a deliberate cackle, he went on about his play. Climbing, bouncing, balancing, and tumbling.
And then he played football.