Life Works Better When You Hear Life Calling You

​Elliott got notification yesterday that he'd been accepted to attend Virginia Tech University. On the surface, college acceptance is an awesome milestone in a kid's life. But I know this milestone reaches far beneath my kid's surface, which makes it all the more meaningful to this dad.

I know Elliott believed getting into the school he most wanted to get into was a longshot. I know he'd already prepared consolation speeches to himself that would allow him to move on to plan B with much feigned excitement. I know he was already playing out his reaction to friends celebrating acceptance while he crawled out from under a nuclear bomb of rejection.

I know Elliott spent a lot of time leading up to yesterday bracing himself for the worst, and not planning for the best.

I know this because of small conversations we had along the way that offered me the kind of clips a dad gets when their kid isn't up for telling him the whole story.

Many times because the kid doesn't even KNOW the whole story.

When I was Elliott's age, I had NO idea that I was much better at pretending to have confidence than actually having it. I was much better at creating an image of being in charge of the world to hide my fear that the world would always be falling apart.

Some stories you don't piece together until many years after you haplessly drank yourself through your own college experience to hide the belief you had no business being there. Its a story you don't piece together until many years later when your story is all about what college wasn't instead of anything that it was.

I am not the kind of dad who tells his kids everything is going to work out okay. I have lived enough life to know that may be one of life's grandest lies. Even if I do believe in a God who makes much more than okay out of everything that doesn't work out okay. I've lived enough of life to discover that as well.

Still, I was sure hoping this one would work out ok for my kid.

I am glad that Elliott really wanted to go to Virginia Tech.

I am glad that Elliott didn't think it would happen.

And I am more than glad that it did.

Because unlike me, Elliott is going off to an experience he truly longs to experience. He is doing so knowing that even in spite of expecting the worst, in spite of believing he wasn't worthy of the experience, someone else saw something very different.

Life works better for you when you believe life is calling you and not rejecting you. And in Elliott's smile yesterday when he was telling me about the acceptance, I felt that for him. I felt my kid being called by life.

And if that college acceptance notice ends up being nothing more than that - a voice calling out on behalf of life - that will be more than enough for this dad.

It would be many decades beyond my teenage years before I would hear that voice. So to celebrate my teen kid hearing it yesterday, well life's gifts don't get much more precious than that.