Some of The Story

I’m used.  I’m over my hill and past my expiration date.  I’m old and tired and I’ve got two young children to raise and a very busy farmer type husband to take care of.  We have two pets.  They must also be cared for.  I have a full time job and aging parents.  I have a huge extended family that I try to be involved with, and I volunteer.  I am invested in my community through our school, parks, and service members.  I write a blog and I try to sleep at least six hours a night.  I also clean my own house and try to cook my own food.  Occasionally, I confess, I patronize the Four Corners, Dino’s and Sassy’s. When we are not supporting our family at their games and concerts, aren’t outside playing, camping or working in the yard; if the house is clean and the kids are fed, and I’m too tired to write, I like to watch a little mystery or detective tv.  If I am typing on my phone or using a stylus on my iPad, you can believe that I am texting a student or highlighting something in a book I’m reading.  I also take sermon notes on my phone Sunday mornings.

So, if all this is true about me, then why do I want to spend my Sunday afternoons with students, when I could be at home with my own?  What makes me text a college kid and ask them how they are on a random Tuesday afternoon? Why do I care if a kid gets yelled at for forgetting their homework or not hitting a triple?  What would motivate me to give up my own free time to listen, as a teenager tells me about their recent break up, failed class, or lost privileges?  Why would a grown woman with such a busy life pull over to the side of the road to pray with a parent who isn’t sure what to do with their rebellious child? Who, in their right mind, drags their babies to football games, dance recitals, and prom marches to crazily snap photos, cheer, and whoop and holler for kids that don’t belong to them? Why do I do what I do?

The world we live in today is overwhelming with all its ills and evils, stressors and dangers.  Recall how many times you have secretly thought that you’d like to be anywhere else, just to get away from it all for a moment.  Think about all the things you’ve done wrong today, and imagine how you would handle it if all eyes were on you, judging you, correcting you, assuming that you are not capable of  doing things or becoming things because of the way you currently act.  That’s what a teenager’s life is like most days.

Kids these days are smart and responsible and attentive and wise.  They are maturing at alarming rates, and are required to make adult choices and actions well before they should.  It’s not root beer floats and roller skates anymore.
It’s Real Life Drama.  

I believe that discipleship has its greatest growth inside of relationship.  I believe that people are created by a loving God, for His glory, and that our lives are all interdependent.  I believe that God has never meant for us to be separated from Him, and when we are, He is grieved.  I believe that He wants us, that He loves us, and that He is available to us.  I believe that there are no age requirements to come to God.  I believe that God loves teenagers as much as he loves the babies and the elderly.

My passion is to walk alongside students and help them see Jesus in the midst of their journey.  To stand with them in their scary stuff, to cheer with them in their victories and successes, and to listen to their dreams.  I feel that God wants that for his teenagers.  God is so loving, so giving, so passionate about his kids, that he created a story for each of them.  My story made me a mess, but God’s power made me a Masterpiece.  God is still making masterpieces!

But why youth?

Time stands still for me in a period which was tumultuous, and frightening.  At an age when I should not have known about the tragedies in the world, I was exposed to adult issues and worries that I was unprepared for.  My world, perfect on the outside, had been marred by generational sin and abuse on the inside.  In the time when I grew up, there was no 9-1-1.  There were no DHS or counselors who came to see you if someone suspected you may be at risk.  In my day, teachers saw attention seeking as nothing more than bad behavior from a bad kid.  When I was bullied, no one saw it, no one heard, and it appeared, no one cared.  When I was cutting and taking pills, no one knew.  It wasn’t until I became ill at lunch each day for a period of time, did anyone figure out that there might be more to my story.  My school nurse noticed that I seemed to be in her office at lunch each day, and, after 16 years, my silence was finally broken by her love.  She didn’t treat me special, I had no more privileges than anyone else in the school.  She didn’t make excuses for me, I had to continue to do the same schoolwork, work at my jobs, and extra-curriculars that I had been doing.  In fact, she made me work harder, by adding journaling and checking in with her to my list of daily responsibilities.   I can only tell you a couple of things she told me, and the rest of the impact came from her actions.  She told me, “You are not responsible for what happened to you, you are responsible for how you respond to it.”  and “You are loved, you are worthy of being loved, and you are precious.”  And she loved me.

She loved me by listening to me, by carving out fifteen minutes of her day during my lunch period to listen to my teen age angst – she loved me.  By smiling at me and saying “Hi Sweetie!” in her unique, cheerful voice Every. Single. Time. she saw me – she loved me.  When I was cheerleading and she looked directly at me and wrinkled her nose and shrugged her shoulders and her eyes twinkled at me – she loved me.  When she told me to take care of myself and treat myself kindly – she loved me.  When she told me on my graduation day, “I’m so proud of you honey!” – she loved me.  When she trusted me to babysit her daughter – she loved me.  When she trusted me to house sit for her – she loved me.  All the years after I moved away, every time I’d run into her on a quick visit home, she’d hug me with a big bear hug, and tell me how good it was to see me – she loved me.  When we moved back and I ran into her at the grocery store and she told me about her grand babies, and when she stood in that store for ten whole, uninterrupted minutes and listened to the story of my miracle babies – she loved me.  And just last month, when I was on a date with my husband and aunts and parents, and she and her husband sat in front of us in the movie theater, and she got up and hugged me and told my parents how wonderful of a daughter they had – she loved me.

She loved me right where I was all the way, until now, when she loves me right where I am.  I had no idea about her faith until after I graduated high school, as you know, that’s not allowed. I never knew how many Sundays she attended church, how often she tithed, if she volunteered to teach Sunday School; But I knew her.  I knew that I could trust her and tell her anything, and I knew that I could count on her to keep me safe and talk me down from any teenage drama that came my way.  I knew that I never wanted to let her down; and even when I did, she loved me.

That’s the kind of person I want to be to teenagers in my community.  That’s the legacy I want to leave behind.  I want to do so much loving, that a student who is bullied knows that they have a defender.  I want to do so much loving that a student who is homeless knows a place that they can get a shower and a hot meal.  I want to do so much loving that a student never wonders if I care about them.  I want to do so much loving that no matter how bad it is at home, the student never doubts that they have a purpose on this earth.  I want to do so much loving that it’s never a question where I get the love I give away.

I have a passion for students because I have a Savior who can turn water into wine, who can calm the sea, who can part the water, who knows how many grains of sand there are on the beach; a Savior who took a ragamuffin mouthy little kid who didn’t even know what real love was, and planted a lady to come walk alongside her and just love her wherever she was.

I have a passion for students because I was a student when God found me, and I am still looking for other students to come along on this journey.

I have a passion for students because I know they need a cheerleader from the ground as they start to fly.

I have a passion for students because I believe God wrote my story in a language they can understand.

I have a passion for students because God has a passion for students, and because I have a passion for God.

Find Your Center.  Tell Your Story.