We are the Gateway

I am the mother of two sons – 17 and 14 years old. Two teenagers.


We live in a raised rancher style home. If you can picture it – the front door enters the lower level, and to the right of the door is our family room. You go up a flight of stairs to the main floor where the bedrooms are. When our 17 year old comes home at night – after work or a track meet – whatever – he knows he must stop by the family room and check in. We will have waited up for him, and he is to stop, tell us he is home, say a few words about his evening – touch base. Then he can go up to bed. By the same routine, when he leaves to go out, he stops by the family room – checking it – telling us where is he going, when will he be back – you know the story. We are the gateway for his going in and his coming out. My husband and I have heard about many of the major events in his young life as he stood in the doorway to the family room – when his “prom date” changed to his “girlfriend,” when he ran off the road and got a flat tire (It’s just a flat, dad – really, it was a flat tire AND a lost wheel well liner, and damage that meant the wheel might fall off). G stood in that doorway and told us about his first speeding ticket, and we talked about his scholarship to West Virginia Wesleyan as he checked in one evening. We are the gateway. And we are the shepherds.