My darling

Dear Baby,

I just wanted to take a second to say hello. Hello! You are right now kicking the dickens out of me. You are unbelievably strong. I can't get over how strong you are. When I put a little pressure on my belly to counteract your intense kicks, you provide counterpressure. Very, very strong counterpressure. How can you already be so strong?!

I'm sitting with you here at work. (Only six more weeks, give or take, that you will be able to come to work with me. It will be a sad day when I have to leave you behind!) I am listening to really, really boring people drone on and on about the "value" of things. Things they want to buy and sell and trade. Things like stock in companies, or pieces of the debt those companies hold, or insurance. Sometimes they talk about the "value" of houses they want to "trade". Or wine. Not for the business, mind you, but for themselves to live in and drink. And I really wonder if they know what value really means. Do they taste the wine when they drink it? Or do they only muse on its selling price and congratulate themselves for getting it on the cheap? Do they imagine the history of a home and its former inhabitants, imagine themselves and their families growing up in its rooms, listen to the walls and the wind in the backyard, notice the neighbors and the flower beds smiling at them? Or do they just calculate its monetary appreciation over the next five years?

And my spirit recoils from them. These are the people who cannot hear music, who cannot open their souls to pray, who cannot bare their hearts to others. There is too much calculation. Do they weep, I wonder? Do they truly love? Can they worship? Can they forbear?

My darling son, my innocent son who has not yet contemplated his vocation, I want you to know that Mommy and Daddy support any good endeavor you wish to pursue. If you choose business, you have our blessing. We know that the world needs business people and that it is as much a holy calling as any other. But if you choose this particular pursuit, please do not forget that you have still been called to create. Create work for others, create a product, create a business. Make something, quite literally, of your life that will be an offering both to God and to men. And do not forget what true praise is - the recognition on a visceral and soul-level of a thing's intrinsic worth, quite apart from it's monetary worth, that you share with others.

Despite what our money-mad society would have you believe, there is more to this gift of life than buying and selling. So much more. And it is wondrously beautiful.

Love,

Mom