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YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES
What Every Father Needs to Know
By JOHN ELDREDGE Nelson Books
Copyright © 2007 John Eldredge
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7852-8876-3
Chapter One
THE SECRET TO BOYS
Every little boy is asking one basic question.
You notice it in nearly everything he does.
Little boys love adventure. Just the other day my wife was having a cup of coffee in the kitchen when she saw-out of the corner of her eye-something fly out the second-story window. She investigated and found a rope, made of bedsheets, hanging from the boys' bedroom window. They had stripped their beds, knotted the sheets together, anchored the "rope" to their bunk beds, and were rappelling down the side of the house, Batman style. Just a typical Saturday morning in a house of boys.
Give a little guy a bicycle. Is it enough that he learns to ride it? Of course not. As soon as those training wheels are off (no, sooner), he's seeing how fast it can go, riding with no hands, jumping it off the curb, making skid marks on the sidewalk, racing against all comers. Noises go with it, too, noises that no one needs to teach a boy-he just knows how to make them. Loud engine noises and speedy, whooshing noises and screeching, crashing noises and a soundtrack to go with it all. That is no mere bike he's riding, and he is no mere boy. He's a motorcycle racer, a fighter pilot, a starship captain.
Look at the stories boys love, the games they play. They are full of battle and adventure and danger. They love to build things ... and then blow 'em up. They love to jump off stuff. What does a boy wear if you let him wear what he wants to wear? Let him out of his school clothes and his Sunday school togs, and in a moment he'll be decked out in camouflage, army style, or dressed up as a cowboy, a fireman, a superhero, a Jedi knight with a bath towel wrapped around him and a stern look in his eye. Every boy wants to be a hero. Every boy wants to be powerful, he wants to be dangerous, and he wants to know: Do I have what it takes?
That's the question every boy is asking: "Do I have what it takes?"
And when he grows a bit older, it turns to fast cars (the louder, the better), computer games of battle and adventure, and making the sports team. He wants to hit the home run in the bottom of the ninth. He wants to make a slam dunk just before the buzzer sounds. If he's more academically inclined, well, then, he wants to win at chess; he wants to ace the test; he wants to come out on top. He wants to prove himself. And all through those years, when he's riding his bike with no hands or trying to look cool and doing all those other things that boys do, he is looking to impress you.
Because every boy shares the same basic question: "Do I have what it takes?"
And every boy looks to his dad to answer it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES by JOHN ELDREDGE Copyright © 2007 by John Eldredge. Excerpted by permission.
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