On Raising Teenagers

I am raising a teenager. And she is my first child. God bless her. I am learning, in increasing increments along the way, that I do not have the answers. This is something I know in my mind. The reasonable part of me is not unclear about this. But somehow, even still, I tend to live as if I do.

I feel like if I can just figure out the perfect cocktail of good words, appropriate amounts of holding close and pulling back, the winsome blend of good humor and sage advice, that I can make it all turn out alright. But, I am not doing any of that with great skill. I have some good words, but they aren’t always great and they definitely aren’t always received as I hope they will be. I feel like I am always either holding too closely or not closely enough. The mother in me usually feels the “not enough” part more while the daughter in her probably always feels the “too close” part more. I think I’m pretty good on the humor part, but she definitely doesn’t think I’m as funny as she used to think. The advice…well, I KNOW I am right about the advice but I also know it sounds boring and irrelevant and churchy and old to her young ears.

Even with all of my good intentions, things don’t go as I would have hoped much of the time. Like 60% of the time, it turns out. Actually, that’s probably generous. And the thing is, even when it does, I don’t have this sense of calm and “all is well” that I hope for. It feels tenuous at best. Like it could all shatter at any moment. Tenuous is probably a good synonym for teenager.

In the midst of it all, here is the only thing that brings me peace. The nearness of Christ.

I know how simple that sounds and I also know that it is not at all easy. For me, it has meant learning to spend the time I have each day like a currency, instead of giving it away without thought. I am trying to be aware of how my thoughts can run away from me. I am committed to wrangling them back and talking to Jesus about them. I started trying to notice when I was feeling anxious and then praying the words, “Yahweh Shalom (God of Peace), your burden is light.” He gave me those words. He is so good at knowing exactly what I need. When I talk to him, I can let it go. Because in that moment it seems so ridiculous to hang onto it when he is right there offering to carry it for me. Sometimes, I can only seem to give it to him for a few minutes before I start to take it back again. So, I do it again. I feel like he gets it. And, when I imagine him in my head, he is always smiling, always ready to take it back. No shame, just grace.

Two things happen for me in those moments. First, I notice that he is right there. That he is present and with me always. Secondly, I realize that I need his presence more than I need him to fix whatever it is. It turns out that his presence in the midst of our suffering or anxiousness or sorrow is actually enough. I can endure as long as I have him. So, his nearness gives me peace.

As he brings me peace, I am more able give my daughter a purer version of the thing that comes more naturally for me in regards to her. Love. Gosh, I just love her so much. I found the picture above when I was in Texas visiting my parents and just stared at it. My face says everything. There was deep contentment in just being her mom. I finally had the thing I had wanted and hoped and prayed for, for so long. I still feel like that. I look at her sometimes and think, “What in the world? How can my heart be filled with so much love?” When I have peace, I can love her in wise ways that don’t require anything of her, a kind of love she seems to welcome more than the grasping kind that desperately wants her to just be safe and good.

I’m told that this phase of parenting is going to last for a while, and probably get a little worse before it gets better. So, I guess I’ll get a lot of practice on how to un-clench and be freed up to love. I’m down for that. It seems as though the Holy Spirit’s work in my life is always pushing me toward more freedom. It is always clearing out more junk to make space for more of Him. He brings conviction so I can be free from sin. Rest so I can be free from trying to earn my worthiness. Contentment and joy so I can be free to enjoy Him and the life he’s given me. Security so I can be free to love. I want that kind of freedom that makes space for more.

At the end of the day, I am like Paul or Apollos in my children’s life. I plant the seed, or I water it. But it is God who makes it grow. I can’t make anything grow. Believe me, I’ve tried. That’s best left up to him, the Master Gardener. My prayer reminds me of this.

Yahweh Shalom, your burden is light. You are doing all the heavy lifting here. Clear out more of my junk so that there is more space to be filled with your living water. Lord, make me a spring of living water, spilling over into the soil of my children’s hearts.

The Hum of Hope

It’s usually about this time during the season of Lent, that I start to give out. Twenty to thirty days of waiting seems to be about what my heart can hold. As I walk through the story of Jesus’ death, the accounts of his unfathomable love pushed right up against the very worst of our humanity…betrayal, abandonment, malice, unbelievable violence…my heart aches for the hope of the resurrection to burst forth. I want to shut my eyes for the last ten days. I can’t bear another day stuck in the place between the brutality of Jesus’ death and the miracle of his living again. And so sometimes, I distance myself. It becomes harder to sit with him in the morning and read the words in my Lenten devotional. I find myself putting it off and then reading through a few days all at once, quickly and without much thought, whispering a quick, “Thank you, Jesus” and moving on about my day.

My experience is that living in hope is real work. It takes real energy to live in that place between what is and what will be. It turns out the apostle Paul agreed with me. Or rather, that I agree with him. Romans 5:3-4 says, “^…but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope.”  All of that work to produce hope, which isn’t even the thing we are hoping for, but just the hope itself. As if hope in and of itself is the prize. Is it?

In the grand scheme of eternity, because we live in the space between the resurrected Jesus and his coming again, hope is offered as a place for us to reside for the foreseeable future. But there are also a hundred little ways (that don’t feel so little) where I get to practice this as well. And living in hope for each of those things is also generally preceded by suffering and perseverance and developed character.

Maybe we hope for a loved one, who is sick, to be healed. We suffer with them and question God about why. We persevere in believing that He is good and near to the brokenhearted and learn to suffer with a more eternal perspective. Our character is shaped more and more by his nearness and by our learning dependence on him. We learn to hope that his goodness and his promises will be the final word in this battle.

Or maybe we hope for a child to love Jesus fully and look to him for life in spite of what the world is telling them. We suffer through the harsh words and the broken relationship. We persevere in our pleading prayers and our giving them over to the Lord again and again. Our character is shaped more and more as we let go of our own agendas, as he convicts us of our own sin the midst of our desires for our children. We learn to hope in the good news that he is in control and he loves them even more than us.

There are countless other ways that we get to practice this throughout our lives. None of it is easy and none of it is a straight line to hope as I’ve described above. We are too human for that. It takes a willingness to do battle against the lies of Satan, and a willingness to study and know the character of God. It also probably takes vulnerability with people who tell you the truth, and a willingness to grasp at that truth. In other words, it takes work. The hum of hope which marks our lives on this earth takes real effort to maintain. Because of this, I sometimes take the easier route. Fear. And anxiety. And hopelessness. Ironically, those things that seem to make life so hard are so instantly and easily at my fingertips whenever I lose perspective. They are ruthless, spinning my mind in all kinds of different directions which always end up placing me firmly at the center of my own universe. I start to problem solve, or angle for control, or else numb it all by shutting myself off from everything and descending into the dark. At the time, any of these seem easier than the work of hope.

But here is the thing about hope: As much work as it is to maintain, it isn’t illusive. Not in the least. Our Heavenly Father is too good to play hide and seek with us in regards to his goodness. At any and every moment, hope is a guitar string ready to be plucked, ready to start the low hum again in our lives. We look up and out, acknowledge our suffering to God. We weep and wail and ask him why. We persevere in our belief in his character, shaping our own in the process. And there it is. Hope returns. And, as Paul concludes in verse 5 of Romans 5, “hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

I think Paul believed that, short of heaven, hope itself is the prize. Hope is our placeholder, the gift before the ultimate gift. Hope is the refrain of the Holy Spirit in every situation. It is the whisper of God in our hearts. “This is not all there is. He is coming back. Look up from this world and remember who He is. He has conquered all of this and will set it all right.”

This is the reality I want to know deeply. So, during the remaining days of Lent, I will open my eyes to the death of my dear Jesus. I will live the details of those hours as much as I can because I want to practice hope. I want to see and feel the bleakness of a Savior dying and dead and buried, so that I can experience the joy of his rising again. If I practice hope during these days of Lent, I might just learn how to live it in my every day life. As I learn to live it in the everyday things, I will know it deeply in the grand scheme of things as I await his glorious return. That is a hope, I’m told, which will not disappoint.

I’m counting on it.