Ben Turned 16 Last Monday

I can’t believe it. He started his first job the week before, at Whitehall Camp & Conference Center as Junior Summer Staff. His primary duty is serving as a lifeguard, but that’s only about four hours a day, and since he’s working 10-12 hours a day, or even longer, there’s plenty of other stuff to keep him busy.

He took his lifeguard training a week ago on Friday through Sunday, and the first campers arrived on Monday. When he’s not lifeguarding, he does everything from weed eating to cleaning to washing dishes to helping with summer camp kids.

I’ve been impressed with how Ben has grown up over the past couple years. During the school year he’s been a real self-starter, getting himself to school on time, knowing when his assignments were due and getting them done. We’ve been lucky to see him for about an hour a day since he started his job, and already we can tell it’s doing him good. He’s told us it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, but the most rewarding, too. We were also blessed to hear him talk about how he’s growing spiritually from the experience. Since he’s eating all his meals and bunking at the camp, too, I can’t tell you how much we miss him being around.

Will is about ready to turn 13 (less than two months from now). Ben and Will are both good boys, and I’m proud of the young men they’re becoming. When I think about what great kids they are, I have to laugh at all the questions we had as they were growing up – questions about parenting and discipline: Were we being too strict? Were we being too lenient? Should we or should we not let them play with razor blades? Okay, that last one didn’t really happen. All in all both boys have made it pretty easy to be parents so far. I know we’ve got a lot of parenting ahead, and everyone tells us the teenage years are the most challenging, but so far so good. We’ll just take things a day at a time, and trust God for the results.

Ben turned 16 last Monday.