Five Years of Jett

Every year, I've set out to write each of our kids a letter on their birthday.

The idea is to capture the things I’m convinced I’ll never forget—but almost certainly will. The mispronounced words. The unexpected questions. The ordinary mornings that don’t feel important until they stop happening.

During Jett’s fourth year, I sent myself nearly 70 emails with little moments I wanted to remember.

Some were insightful.

Some involved motorcycles, bodily functions or a trip to the emergency room.

All of them were Jett.

“Daddy, let me tell you some-sing”

That is still one of my favorite ways Jett begins a conversation.

You know something important is coming when he walks into the room and says, “Daddy, let me tell you some-sing.”

And this year, he had a lot to tell me.

He told me I was a beast.

He assured me that if I kept practicing, I might someday become a really good motocrosser.

He explained that his body needed a snack, his body needed to sleep and, on more than one occasion, his body needed to do something that apparently overruled every instruction we had just given him.

He called the New Year’s Eve ball drop “the Gumball.”

When Shawn and I were disagreeing, he offered us the kind of marriage advice people usually pay thousands of dollars to receive:

“Just say you’re sorry and let’s go.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Live Life Like Jett

Jett approaches life with a level of confidence normally reserved for people who have either achieved complete enlightenment or have not yet developed the part of the brain that calculates consequences.

Our neighbor adopted “Live life like Jett” as a personal motto—although he added that anyone attempting to do so should probably carry good insurance.

That feels accurate.

This year, Jett learned to kick-start his yellow Cobra motorcycle. He stood up on water skis on his first attempt. He went beekeeping and found the queen bee in less than a minute—something our beekeeper said she had never seen a beginner do in ten years.

He also fell off a chairlift while trying to look at his cousin, split his face open badly enough to require more than 30 stitches and scared us more times than I care to count.

His PE teachers once joked that when Jett fell, they didn’t check on him. They checked on the floor.

But underneath all that fearlessness is a tenderness I hope he never loses.

He is quick to encourage people. He tells me I look handsome and tells Drew she looks beautiful. He notices when someone needs help. He asks questions about God, love, marriage and what it means to become a dad.

At four years old, he asked Shawn, “How do I find a love like you and Dad?”

I hope he always sees our marriage that way.

Our Mornings Together

One of my favorite rhythms this year happened before most of the world was awake.

Jett would get up around 5:45 in the morning and come with me to the gym. We would drink water, say what we were grateful for, pray, grab our bars and go work out.

Then I got sick and stopped getting up early.

One morning, he came into our room and asked why I wasn’t working out.

It hit me that he had been watching.

Our little routine mattered to him. The choices I made when I thought no one was paying attention were teaching him what a man does.

Wanting to be the man Jett thought I was made me want to become a better man.

That may be one of the strangest and most beautiful parts of fatherhood: your children admire you long before you feel worthy of their admiration. Then their belief in you calls you upward.

An Interview With a Five-Year-Old

After reading him his birthday letter, I sat down to interview him.

He had just celebrated his fifth birthday with what I mistakenly referred to as Slip ’N Slides.

“Mega Slides,” he corrected me.

My apologies.

I asked him how it felt to be five.

“Good,” he said.

Then he decided it was also bad because Andy hadn’t come over and some of his friends didn’t get to stay for dinner. Five, apparently, was already complicated.

He told me his favorite sport was flag football, his coach was going to be Daddy and he wanted to become a “UFA player” when he grew up.

An NFL player, he clarified.

When I asked whether he could run faster than me, he said no because I “need to run really fast” since I played football.

I appreciate that he still believes this about me.

His favorite thing to do is play with his friends Samuel and Dev. His favorite summer trip was visiting our family in Indiana. He prefers playing inside because “there’s more colder when you go inside”—his first public endorsement deal for air conditioning.

When I asked where we lived, he answered, “In the forest.”

Technically, Nashville, Tennessee—but I like his answer better.

When I asked what he was most excited about now that he was five, he answered without hesitation:

“To turn six.”

So much for enjoying the moment.

The Questions I Couldn’t Prepare For

The best part of interviewing a five-year-old is that the questions occasionally change direction.

At one point, Jett stopped me and asked, “Why do we have birthday parties instead of getting older without birthday parties?”

I didn’t have a good answer.

Maybe birthday parties are our attempt to slow everything down. We put up decorations, invite the people we love and take hundreds of pictures because we know another year is disappearing right in front of us.

Later, we started talking about church.

“Who do we talk about at church?” I asked.

“God and Jesus.”

“Do you know God loves you?”

“Yep.”

Then Jett asked, “Why do I never meet Jesus?”

That one deserved more than the answer I managed in the moment. I told him that he might not meet Jesus the way he meets a normal person, but that Jesus is with him in a different and really special way.

This year, Jett became increasingly curious about faith. He asked question after question about baptism. Before bed one night, he looked at me and asked, “Do you know that you’ve got God in your heart?”

Those were his final words before falling asleep.

I have spent a lot of time thinking I am supposed to teach him about God. Then he says something like that and reminds me how often God uses him to teach me.

“I’m Right Here With My Daddy”

Near the end of our interview, I asked Jett to tell me about his mom.

“She loves me,” he said.

Then, after thinking about it:

“And nothing else.”

Sorry, Shawn.

When I asked him to tell me about his dad, he said:

“He loves me. I’m right here with my daddy.”

I don’t know if he will remember saying that.

I know I will.

There is a strange grief hidden inside raising children. You are constantly celebrating who they are becoming while quietly saying goodbye to who they used to be.

Childhood chapters sometimes end without an announcement.

One night, they need you to do everything for them. Then, without realizing it, you warm the final bottle. You change the last pull-up. You carry them from the car for the last time.

Nothing tells you that a chapter is ending while it is happening.

That is why I write these letters. It is why I saved 70 emails. It is why we turned on the cameras and asked Jett questions he may answer completely differently a year from now.

I thought I was recording these moments for him.

But I think I’m also recording them for myself.

My Prayer for Five

Jett, my prayer is that you keep your courage without losing your tenderness.

I hope you keep attempting things before you know whether you’ll be good at them. I hope you keep encouraging the people around you. I hope you keep asking questions that stop adults in their tracks.

I hope you become an NFL player if that is still your dream—and that you forgive me if flag football reveals some limitations in my coaching ability.

I hope you keep searching for God, loving your family and inviting me on adventures through the forest.

You can grow up. That is the deal we made.

You just have to keep loving me.

And however big your adventures become, I hope you always know there is a home, a family and a dad who cannot believe he gets to love you.

Happy fifth birthday, Jett.

Now let’s go take that hike.