Voices

My son just started high school.  Sniff. The end.

Not really, it’s going great.  I’m always astounded at the stress I put this kid through.  Being the oldest child is a challenge when your mom is a control freak.  We made it through the first few weeks and I’m feeling pretty proud of how low key I was.  I sent my husband to do all the neurotic things.  He makes it look like normal concern rather than mom paranoia.

I’ve worked with teenagers since I was one (a teenager, that is).  I love this age.  I love their idealism and energy.  I remember learning a lesson about raising teenagers several years ago when my big kids were still very little.  One of “my girls” (I still think of that group of high schoolers as “my girls” even though they are grown with families now) called me and asked if she could come see me and ask me about some things she was struggling with.  She wasn’t having some kind of crisis of faith or morality.  She has a wonderful mother who had carefully and rightly instructed her. I think she just needed to hear someone she trusted echo God’s voice in what she was being told by her parents.  As we talked and I shared my short (then) years’ experiences with her she mentioned that her mom was a little confused that she wanted to come talk to me, when I would probably give her the same advice…..

I totally get this.  I have swallowed extreme frustration hearing my kids repeat the same instruction I’ve given them (which they seemed to ignore) with new words given them by someone else as if this advice is genius and breakthrough.  This also happens with husbands but that is for a different post called never.

Since then I’ve heard this described as the “voices” in our kids’ lives.  As I sat next to my teenage son eating Mexican food the other night, listening in as he talked and talked and talked to his youth minister across the table I remembered “my girl” from years ago. This is good stuff, because as he talks he also listens and I know he will be hearing true instruction and encouragement.  Instead of being threatened that my kids don’t bow in gratitude and hang on my every word (which is never going to happen and is probably why I talk to myself a lot), I should look up and be thankful that God is faithful to speak to my kids in lots of different ways which all echo HIS OWN VOICE!  That is the goal.  Instead of fussing at them for not listening to me, maybe I should just rejoice with them when they learn Truth and smile to the One who always sees and hears. 

Yes, I want to be faithfully instructing and sharing with my children.  It is a huge responsibility that is not to be pawned off onto others. BUT, neither is it meant to be completed by me. This passage should be a humble description of me as I venture for the first time into the high school parenting waters……

”There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears.” 
Philippians 1:6 Message

My kids need to be hearing this verse in my words to them and about them to others, in my hopeful and high expectations of their behavior, and my quick forgiveness of their mistakes.  Because in the end it’s all about God; He does, He is (to repeat a text from a precious friend recently).  So I will be diligent to instruct and be instructed, to protect my children from dangerous and lying voices, even while allowing other truthful voices to speak over them often and creatively.

This month I’ve been studying Psalm 107.  In verse 3, the people are praising God that He has “gathered them” from all directions where they have been scattered away from home and one another.  I learned that when He gathers them it is His action to “bring them together because they are attracted, not called.” 

This is good, really good and challenging, and irritating because my parenting technique is typically more about calling than attracting. 

So here’s what I’m learning; parenting isn’t about me doing a good job, it’s about God being free and abounding in our family because He is free and abounding in the secrecy and display of my own life.  Family is meant to be God reflective; full of echoes and glimpses that attract my children more powerfully than the voices of lies calling for their attention. 

“Out of them shall come songs of thanksgiving,
and the Voices of those who celebrate.

I will multiply them, and they shall not be few;
I will make them honored, and they shall not be small.

Their children shall be as they were of old,
and their congregation shall be established before me….”

Jeremiah 30:19-20