What Your Son Will Remember

A new series on loving your son well, at every age.

I turned sixty this year, and it was, without question, the best birthday I have ever had.

Not because of any single celebration, but because of a beautiful gift my daughter gave me. She calls it my Birthday Book — an album she spent months assembling from letters and photographs gathered from family and friends across different seasons of life. I treasure it more than I can quite explain. I even told my family, only half-joking, that someday, when memory begins to slip, they need only tuck me into my favorite chair, place that book in my hands, and I will be content for hours.

The notes from friends and family were generous and thoughtful in all the ways you would hope for. But the letters from my four sons were something else entirely. I found myself reading them slowly, setting the book down, and then coming back again.

Not because they described a perfect mother. They did not. But because, in their own words, they named something I had not fully seen while I was in the middle of living it.

They wrote about steadiness. About presence. About being known and understood. About a kind of love that had felt, to them, consistent over time.

And I remember thinking, almost in surprise: So that is what it looked like from the other side.

Because my own memory of raising them is not a neat or polished one. It is made up of ordinary days, repeated many times over. Mother-son talks that seemed to go unheard. Moments of correction and moments of doubt. Times when I wondered whether anything I was doing was actually taking root.

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I have been thinking about this more than usual lately, partly because of those letters, and partly because of the conversations I keep having with other mothers of sons. They come from every stage: the mother of a young boy, the mother of a teenager, the mother of a young adult finding his own way. The details differ, but the question underneath is often the same: Does this matter? Is what I am doing making any difference at all?

Holding those letters, I am more convinced than ever that the answer is yes — though rarely on the timeline we would choose, and not always in the ways we expect.

What is being built between a mother and her son is rarely visible in the moment. It lives in the homework sat through and the practices driven to, the chores assigned and the meals made — so many meals — and the thousand small discussions that seemed, at the time, to go absolutely nowhere. Taken individually, none of it looks like much. But together, it creates something steady enough to be recognized years later.

Looking back, I can see it unfolding in three distinct seasons.

In the early years, the work is largely one of affirmation and presence. The message, repeated in many direct and subtle ways, is: I believe in you.

In the teenage years, it becomes one of steadiness and restraint, remaining available even when it is not easily received. The message becomes: I am here for you.

And in adulthood, the work grows quieter and more hidden, expressed in trust and very often in silent prayer. It becomes: I am praying for you.

In the coming weeks, I’d love to linger with each of these a little longer, sharing a story or two from those years, with those sons, and what I’ve come to understand looking back.

Less as a set of instructions, and certainly not as a picture of doing it all well, but simply as something to place in your hands if you’re walking through one of these seasons right now.

Because if those letters reminded me of anything, it is this: much of what matters most is not immediately visible. It is built slowly, often unnoticed, and recognized only later — when the shape of it can finally be seen.

And if you’re in the middle of it, wondering if it’s making any difference…

it is.

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A Closing Blessing

I pray that you will be strengthened for the long work of loving your son, that you will not grow weary in the small, unseen moments, but trust that they are shaping more than you can see.

May you know, in the deepest places, that the love you are pouring into him is not disappearing into thin air. It is taking root. It is becoming part of who he is, and who he will be.

I lift you up to the God who sees every quiet act of faithfulness and wastes nothing, and I ask Him to give you wisdom for each season, patience for the in-between, and the grace to trust Him with what you cannot yet see.

In His grace,

Lisa Jacobson

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P.S. Next week I'll be sharing the first post in this series — for mothers of young sons, ages 4-12. It begins in a laundry room, with a bowl of eggs and a boy who looked up at me with the most hopeful eyes. I think you'll want to be there for it.