The Heartbreak of a Teen

I was sitting at home watching TV and waiting for my oldest daughter, Caitlyn to arrive home from her youth group with her boyfriend. They attend a high school group with some of their friends from high school.

My daughter came in sounding like she was laughing hysterically and when I went to see what was up, I soon realized those weren’t laughs. They were heart-breaking sobs, coupled with never ending tears and hunched shoulders.

I asked her what was wrong, and she just cried worse. I am thinking, car accident, something went wrong at church, or a death of a friend. It was worse than that.

Her boyfriend of almost 8 months, cause in teen years, every day counts, had broken up with her. He started the conversation like so many of us have heard before, “We need to talk.” Then he dropped the bomb, and left her standing on the porch crying while he got in the car with his dad and drove off.

This is where we enter the story again, with my daughter in tears. It honestly breaks your heart as a mom, because you want to take that pain away and just make it all better. We know better that only time and a lot of prayers make it better.

I had her call her best friend, Samm, that lives down the block even though it was getting late. Girlfriends never think anytime to deal with a break up is too late. She was over in a matter of minutes.

During that time, between sobs, and hugs, we learned that he felt they would be better friends. Oh how I have heard that before. Typical excuse, even though deep down, I felt there was more. Since they are both so young, communication skills were something that they were both learning.

My daughter explained that for a couple of weeks, they were arguing a bit more, and there were longer periods of silence between them. He was spending more time away from her than with her and their phone calls were getting shorter.

Background: She is going on 16 in two months and he just turned 15 in January. They don’t go to the same school, just occasionally get together on Wednesday nights for youth group and some dates on the weekend with friends and family. They are both committed to keeping themselves spiritually pure until marriage and both have strong Christian upbringing and families.

During the remainder of the night we tried to get her calm enough to at least try and get some sleep and we would deal with them more in the morning. I tried to explain that since they were both so young, it’s hard to learn the art of communicating when things are going well in your relationship, to try and resolve them. It takes practice. Lot’s of practice.

My daughter seems to think my hubby and I are seasoned experts. I had to explain that things aren’t always as great as they seem and we have to work things out when we don’t agree. I explained that we already have an agreement based on our marriage covenant that we will stay together no matter what, so we have to agree to work together when we come to a fork in our road.

We agree that we are committed to talking it out.

I often wonder in this turbulent time in our world if this isn’t the enemy trying to break up a great pair of people who are committed to furthering God’s work among the teens. If he can try to cause separation, he knows they won’t work on trying to stay together, they will simply turn and walk away. Too much trouble to deal with.

I wonder what would have happened if they simply agreed to sit down together to discuss their differences openly to see if those are changes both are willing to make to keep the relationship intact.

Why is it easier to walk away rather than try to work it out?
Are relationships so disposable that we can treat people like they don’t matter?

I believe if you commit to one another, even in a teen relationship, you need the support of both parents to help teens through issues such as this.
Otherwise, how will our teens learn how to deal with issues once something like this comes up in a marriage?

If we don’t teach them how to communicate, how will they learn?

My daughter saw how well my husband and I get along, but what she failed to understand is what she doesn’t see.

She doesn’t see compromise, she doesn’t see a willingness to work on things and never give up, and she doesn’t see how we honestly resolve our conflicts together when we don’t agree.

Please pray for her to be healed in this breakup process. Please pray that God won’t allow her to harden her heart towards others God may bring her way. Pray that God will reveal any lesson to her that she needed to learn by this experience and that He will send her comfort. By the way, she is the person pictured above.

With so many teen suicides these days, we never know what teens are thinking. We are truly blessed that she has a great network of Christian friends that we are making sure she is with daily right now. Dark times lay ahead and we pray that parents are open enough with our teens to make sure they can come to us with any need they have no matter how dumb or stupid it may seem.

We need to pray for not only our teens but the others they come into contact with daily, who may be searching for a willing ear and a shoulder to cry on and a heart that understands.