itsawonderfilledlife

There is a life mystery that I expect I will never fully understand. It is twofold: First is the amazing love, and dedication, and awe, and commitment that a parent feels when their newborn is placed in their arms. Second is how that beautiful, innocent, miraculous bundle of joy turns into a surly, snarly, stubborn teenager.

As a parent, who has experienced both the beautiful babe and the surly teen, I am baffled at how one morphs into the other. I am also confounded at how I have morphed as well. From the moment that I would have confirmation of being pregnant I was in love, I was willing to die for that child …

• and then they become a defiant two year old,
• and then they won’t eat their veggies
• and then they get into a fist fight on the playground
• and then they talk back
• and then they argue over anything (as in anything you say)
• and then they won’t talk
• and then you understand why some creatures eat their young …

I also work in a school, and so I get to see teens, daily, with their chosen packs (you know, like wolf packs … so many similarities 😉 ), and it does a number on my ‘parent perspective’ of those surly teens.

Here is what I see:

• ‘friends’ who embarrass and humiliate them in front of other ‘friends’
• faces of failure, because they didn’t get the mark they thought or hoped they would on an assignment or test
• not wanting to ask for help in class, because they truly feel they are the only ones who do not get it
• exhaustion caused by working late, so that they can have the money to buy the ‘things’ that keep them ‘in’ with the pack
• exhaustion caused by the reality that a teens body has a different clock from an adults (and from our school schedule), their bodies are programmed to ‘awaken’ in the evening, making sleep hard to come by until late into the night
• inattention in class, causing reprimands from teachers who have not been alerted, by parents, of the illness of a family member, the pending separation/divorce of parents, deaths, etc., etc., etc.
• students who look like a scared creatures when they walk down the hallways, because they feel they have no ‘pack’ to belong to
• students who are self-injuring (cutting, eating disorders, drugs, alcohol, illicit sex), who have so much going on in their minds and bodies, that they hurt themselves to distract from the big hurts in their lives

This is what I see, it is not all I see (I do see good stuff too, and lots of it, but the good stuff doesn’t contribute to surly so much), but this is what I see that makes me look at my surly teens differently. I now know that when they hop in the van at the end of the, our van might be the only place they have felt ‘safe’ all day, and they might be surly to me because I might be the first person in their day who they know will love them, despite their behaviors, or their looks, or their hearts.

Moms and Dads, we need to continue to be the same ‘in love’, willing to die for you parents that we were when we first laid our eyes on our babies. We need to stop responding to our kids surly behaviors, and start seeking the reasons why they are surly. We need to stop being offended by their attitudes, their music choices, their clothing and hair styles and start looking through all of that to the child/adolescent/teen/young adult at the core of who they are. We need to love them through the eyes of a Father God, who looks at us, not as we are (thank goodness), but as who He knows we can become.

Every week, I know of a daughter who willfully breaks the rules of her Father. She lies, she snubs others, she can be really mean to those younger than her, she has hissy fits, she leaves the house without telling anyone where she is going, and she might spend days without saying a single word to her father. Then, one day every week she goes out in public to say how much she loves her Daddy. And you know what, because her father is God, He welcomes me back … every time. Because my Father God knows I am going to be surly (it’s a given, just like our kids), but He sees in my the enormity of what I can become, and He isn’t going to give up on my until I see it too.

Don’t stop seeing the enormity of what our surly teens can become.

Read Full Post »