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This morning we did something that we’ve done a few times before. We took one of our kids to their next and most exciting adventure yet…and then drove away. It’s always hard, but this one was different.

My son Jon (about whom I have written before) is on his way to Basic Combat Training at Fort Benning, Georgia. In about four months he will come home and go to college. And, when he returns, he will be a different person – a different man – than the one that we hugged goodbye today.

I’m so excited for him. All of his life, from the time he could even formulate the words, he has wanted to be “an army guy.” He is living that dream – with all of the hardship and hurt and the exhilaration and adventure that goes with it.

And I’m anxious for him. He is away from friends and family. He will have very limited contact with any of us. And he will be pushed physically, mentally, emotionally, and probably spiritually like he has never been tested before.

The courage to walk into this adventure is amazing to me. It is the same courage that made it possible for his brother and sister(in-law) commit a year of their lives to serve kids in Honduras. It is the courage that enabled his sister to go all over the country to seek and audition and find the graduate school she was supposed to attend. It is the very courage that enabled his brother to walk on to the college football team despite his lack of size.

But this son of mine…has had this dream longer and more fully planted within him than any of them. And he has paid a high price to pursue it. Why? Because he has the God-given wisdom to see that the dream was greater than the comfort he had to give up to pursue it.

As a man that has spent too much of his life concerned with his comfort, I am especially proud of this son of mine – and the others as well – and the courage they display by going further, stronger, and better than I have.

And isn’t that what we really want for our kids – not that they have more or better stuff or easier lives, but that they go further than we could, touch more lives than we were able, and advance the kingdom of God to an even greater degree?

Go, Jon. Go in this great courage of yours and live this dream that God has placed within you. And may you serve His kingdom in such a way that you will hear Him say, “Well done.”