Your Child and the Christmas Child

Second only to you is there someone who values and cares about your teenage children as they stand on the threshold of their adult lives, backs to their childhood homes, about to step forward, irreversibly and consequentially. That someone, in the existential sense, is me your college admissions and financial aid coach. Beyond that is the one who called me to my work, our Lord and Savior. In his name I serve you.

It is important for you to know that. At this time of year nearly everyone is caught up in some expression of observance. For me, Christmas is the right word, because the child born in Bethlehem is the right person to worship and adore. It is he who gives inexpressible and eternal value to your child's life. In a world in which prenatal life is widely disregarded, your child's life is of supreme value to our Creator, and has been since conception. It is that moral conviction that forms my relationship with the students I coach for college admissions and financial aid. In other words, it is not so much the "where" of college, as the "who" the young man or young woman going to college.

I hazard a guess and declare that all of the high school students with whom I have worked know, beyond doubt, that I value and respect them sincerely. It is important to me that your child is affirmed and valued. A primary aim of my work is that all of the teenagers know someone believes in them as human beings, as persons of worth, loved and admired for who they are, more than for what they have accomplished (or will accomplish). Your child is important because your child is present among us.

The opportunity I have to engage with teenagers at one of life's crucial junctions is a privilege I would have no claim to except by the call of God on my life, and your parental permission in my life. For all of that I thank you, and our Lord this Christmas.