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.

Chasing Rainbows

Ever heard yourself mutter the all too familiar phrase, "I'll be happy when...(you fill in the blank)" I could have filled it from the time when I was a child and simply wanted to be older. Older so I could stay up later or older so I didn't have to check in with my parents all the time....older so I can drive a car myself and go where I want to go. Then it became, if I found love, true love like a fairy tale, then if only all these problems in my marriage would go away, perhaps if I just had a child, we could be happy, then it was if only the pain of the divorce would go away and I could be happy with being single. That soon changed to if only I could be married to someone real this time, someone who can love me, despite all my shortcomings and really be my soulmate....funny thing is that we can continue this vicious cycle and before long, we have a whole lot of time behind us and only a few years left in front of us and still we haven't found happiness.

This is probably the reason parents see fit whenever possible to offer sound advice to our teens and their friends or anyone for that matter that will listen. We don't want them to waste time chasing rainbows and instead treasure the time right there in front of them and stop worrying about things that will never change. We want to share our life experiences with them. I know I do that with my daughters and all their friends. I want to leave a lasting legacy and sometime in their futures, I want them to remember some piece of advice that they will recall came from me. It usually sounds like, "I sound like my mom!"

Years later I can still hear my mother's voice, see her warm smile and realize how often people really loved her. Her customers always used to tell me how lucky I should be and I never really accepted that until I was older and now have kids of my own.

I challenge you in the next upcoming week to review your life and see if you haven't been chasing some rainbows in your life and see if there aren't some changes you would like to make before it's too late. Perhaps it's finally time to dedicate your life to God and see what amazing things He has just waiting for you! Especially in these economic times of uncertainity, God is the only thing that is certain and never changing. Won't you give Him a try? What are you waiting for?

Maintaining Our Teens Self Esteem

I often worry about the state of our teens as you have often heard me write about in previous posts. My concern here is more about what our teens are doing when us, parents, are out in the working world and don't seem to have time for them. I read an article today on the Focus on the Family website about the alarming things that are happening to our teens and how parents are basically turning their backs on them.

I realize that parents have to work and there can't always be someone home with them when they get home, but eventually you do get home. Do you talk to your teen, really talk to them? Do you even know who their best friends are? What they do for lunch? What their favorite classes are? If you don't, I would strongly encourage you to find out. You are missing out.

We are entrusted by God to "raise" our kids in the way of the Lord, so when they are older they will not depart from it. Raise is knowing about your teen, encouraging conversations with them and their friends. I also don't think that being your teens best friend is the answer. They need boundaries that parents can provide! They need limits on the choices they can make until they reach 18. They need guidance, not free time. They are spending so much time in the electronic world, with Myspace, web pages, Instant Messaging and Cell Phones that when these devices don't work, they honestly don't know what to do with themselves.

We need to make time for them. We need to give them our attention to listen to the things and issues that are going on in their lives and help guide them in the direction they should go. I am saddened by the parents who simply don't care about their kids. To them, it's simply a count down of how long before they leave the house and they can get on with their life without being tied down to that teen anymore. Quite honestly, that parent at some point in their life will regret that decision and they may lose that contact with their teen/s forever.

Our teens today are so overwhelmed not only with technology and trying to keep up with their friends and social events, but with homework, classes, clubs, sporting events, church, before they have a moment of free time. They were never designed to just automatically handle the ability to master task like a work employee. They don't even get paid to handle that work load. We need to help guide them into handling and managing that rough schedule.

In addition to this, students feel the need to cheat in order to stay and keep ahead. The national statistics show that 90% of highschoolers cheat either on homework or tests in order to maintain grades. They feel the pressure of getting into good colleges if they don't maintain good grades. The truth be known, not all kids are straight A students, yet we make them feel as they need to be. I mean the kid next door doesn't seem to have that problem. Our teens need an outlet to express themselves and get out from this unbearable workload.

We also need to be concerned about weight issues and sex. Most kids these days don't see it as any big deal if they lose their virginity before they enter high school and teenage pregnancy can be handled by abortion or adoption. It is amazing that teens don't see anything wrong with that attitude. They don't even see anything as wrong until they are confronted by it.

What they need from us besides our time while we can be here to give it to them is to be that role model for them to follow. Set some time aside and just hang out with your teen and just see what they have to say. All too often their friends are giving them the wrong advice because no one is there to give them something better.

Make time for your teenager now, before it's too late and all that time has slipped away from you!