about a year ago, after realizing the depths to which a father can sink, my then-14-year-old daughter blamed God.
for everything.
everything bad that ever happened in her life, every question she could come up with that flew in the face of everything she had been taught for 14 years, every single, solitary questionable thing. she blamed God. i mean, it makes sense. when you know that God is in control of everything, and God could have done something about the stupid decisions made by the people he created, you would blame him when the horrible over which you had no control happens.
it makes sense.
it was in that moment that i went blank. it was in that moment that i started to wring my hands. i know what i believe. i went through the whole faith identification period. i can fall back on all of my personal faith experiences, those experiences i have shared with my friends, my moments of one-on-one with the reality of Jesus Christ. the proof in my head and my heart that he is who he says he is and he does what he says he can do.
after i went blank, i freaked out. other than to pray, i have no idea what to do.
my child has a head knowledge of who God is. she has a clear picture of him as a being. his history is lodged in her mind. she knows of what he is capable, she knows that he exists. she “asked him into her heart” when she was three years old from a-top her toddler bunk bed.
but does she know him?
i asked that question out loud in the beginning of March and i have pondered it endlessly since then. i have searched book titles and blog posts and websites and picked a couple of youth-minded people’s brains. i’ve dug back into my memory to examine from where my experiences with God came…it was crazy teen camps and sleepless youth retreats and conversations with friends at church and bible studies and discipleship classes and car rides and bus trips and sitting-on-the-beach-with-my-journal-cry-sessions.
the things my kids don’t know anything about.
i was hungry for Christ in a way i could feel. i’m sure it helped that my parents were still pretty new to the faith when i was growing up, and that they led my youth group.
*faith* is all my kids have ever known.
Bible curriculum every single day, Bible intertwined into their History and Science and even their math lessons, church every Sunday morning, at least two services most of the time, mid-week kids’ programming, VBS over the summers, worship music blaring from my computer to rehearse new worship songs, biblical correction when they do something wrong, bedtime prayers, grace before meals…when my girl whined that she’d had this crammed down her throat her whole life…
…she really wasn’t far off the mark.
i don’t apologize for that. i don’t.
but now i don’t know what to do. i don’t know how to help them want Jesus. and frankly…i realize i can’t do that anyway. and if i did…it wouldn’t be theirs either. then they’d go through all of this again because i actually had been literally cramming. Jesus. down. their. throats. my goal is not to defeat the purpose by making sure they have some prescribed experience to manufacture emotion and stir up something that isn’t real..
but i would love for them to know the Jesus i know. i believe it is the lifetime of experiences that makes me know him…not just know of him. i know that will happen differently for each of them. but it’s not happening now. and i don’t know how to provide the opportunity for them to have this thing i want them to have.
the thing is, i also have a tiny thought in the midst of this with which i truly don’t know what to do. it’s not tiny, though.
in my youth group of 50 or so teenagers 25 years ago…there is something i remember.
i remember relationship. i remember knowing them. not knowing only the 3 girls in my grade level. i knew the kids who came. almost all of them. and i knew their struggles. and i knew their strengths. i knew their parents. their sports. i knew some of their favorite ice cream flavors and favorite subjects. i knew how he felt about his mom’s new boyfriend. that she worried about her sister who just went to college. i knew that they were from a families that didn’t know Jesus, and that just getting to youth group was a challenge from week to week. i didn’t know these things because i was the youth group president (though at one point i was). i didn’t know it because i was the extrovert in the group (i might have been that too). i knew it because we were involved in each other’s lives. we were transparent with one another because we built relationships outside our grade levels and our genders and our backgrounds and our cliques. (and we still had cliques. don’t get me wrong.) teenagers group up. it wasn’t perfect, but…we really did real life together. i’m sure there were people who didn’t feel included, but…it was up to the teen leaders in the group to suck them in. and we really did try to do that. even when it was tough.
my kids have absolutely no real connections at youth group with anyone but the one kid (each) that they have known for, well, most of their lives at this church. one kid who has always been in the same grade level with them. i don’t understand it. there are 250 kids in the group. and yes, there are groups of kids who know each other, and groups of kids who hang out (the ones who all went on the mission trip to DC. the ones who sing together on worship team.)(that actually involves many of the same kids…)(the kids who are in the same marching band or play on the same soccer team). but there is just no depth there. they play great games. they have a great worship band. they have designed good messages and ask good questions for small group time. they break off into age-arranged small groups of 5 or 10 teens for in-depth discussion. the small group leaders are hopeful and encouraging. but what happens when my sixth grade girls stand up from their seats after all of the good questions are answered and we’ve prayed for their upcoming tests and their mom’s surgery and their cousin’s best friend’s uncle’s girlfriend?
did they experience Jesus at youth group?
did they experience each other???
and if they did neither of those things…
…will they?
it has been my experience, both by watching the small group i lead and watching my kids in their small groups that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding no. they talked about Jesus. they talked about what happened in their week. but they don’t talk again after they leave that room unless they’re related or specifically came together.
how do i give my children the opportunity to be in real relationship with other Christians or even with Jesus if the only experience they have with people who should be real with them…is either fake or nonexistent??? and let’s be honest. i homeschool my kids. their experience with other kids does not include a high school of 1000 other teenagers. it includes a youth group of 250 (which, let’s remember, is larger than some of our local high schools) and soccer teams/dance classes and their extended family. they’re not socially awkward or recluses, but church is their best bet for finding friends and relationships.
our church is always talking about the children’s ministry and student ministry programs “partnering with parents” to grow their kids in a knowledge and love for Christ. i know it isn’t my church’s responsibility to do all the work where growing my kids’ spirituality is concerned. i have been “doing my job” so to speak, to the best of my ability (accompanied by great failures along the way), raising them up in a knowledge of Christ and attempting to model my faith every moment of their not-so-little-anymore lives. i also realize that at some point, the kids must take it upon themselves to want a deeper faith and walk with Jesus. but if they don’t choose faith before they graduate high school, the statistics show that they walk away. and don’t walk back.
i have two years.
fifteen years have gone so fast. two more just doesn’t seem long enough.
help me out here folks. i’m at a loss.
All Is Grace 
#1 by Michelle on August 22, 2014 - 11:36 am
this is a powerful post, Mindy. you’ve put into words the fear of every Christian parent, I’m pretty sure. I don’t know if I can “help you out” with some sort of novel advice. praying doesn’t feel like enough, but I do believe that it is. my kids have “grown up in the church” much like you described. and while they haven’t experienced a crisis of faith, I’ve waited anxiously for their faith to become their own. my oldest, in particular, I’ve watched and wondered. he’s the silent type, like his dad, so I feel like I never know what’s going on with him. in recent months, I’ve seen him act out the love of Jesus to two kids who really needed it. kids whose presence I was afraid would lure MY kid away from the things of God. and I’m encouraged. parenting teenagers is so much harder than I ever imagined it would be.
#2 by Roman Hokie on August 23, 2014 - 9:06 pm
I would fathom a guess that, because you and I did not grow up in the church since we were knee high to grasshoppers, that our children (yes, mine, too) have had, perhaps, limited experience observing the transformation that Christ offers through the Holy Spirit. The difference in my pre-Christian days and my post-Christian days weren’t TOTALLY night and day, but more like noon and evening. 🙂
After my, ahem, conversion, I struggled with the same things (of course) and for about 10 years had extensive head knowledge. Heck, I read Gen – Rev in a year, 3 months before I even came to faith. It wasn’t until I went through some interpersonal struggles I had with the church leadership bullies (yes, bullies, in the CHURCH, even) that I realized that what was going on was more about them and not about Him – leading me to explore what He was doing with me. That Christianity was not about morality and behaviors as much as about walking with Him.
It takes a great deal of time and patience to turn the head knowledge into heart knowledge. And, Pixie, you can’t make that happen any more than you can make it rain or snow.
I do assure you that, if God has the heart of your cherub, even if the cherub struggles with the fullness of that, He will keep the heart of your cherub.
My older Princess went to “sleepover camp” for a week back in 2008 (she was 8). I was on business travel so wasn’t available to comfort my bride during the torrential thunderstorms that week (the camp was less than 0.5 mile walk from our home – seriously) and the kid seems to be unscathed, but did not want to do it again. Her sister has declined as well. This year, we prepare for her to go a week in 2015 to Knoxville, TN for our denomination’s triennial youth convention. (Note: I’m not sold on the denomination, but my daughter has made some friends. My bride works most weekends, so unable to go, and my other daughter and I, being introvert, have extremely limited (null) connection. But that’s neither here nor there. My point is that spirituality and faith can and SHOULD look different. Yours is yours and your daughter’s is her own.
One struggle I face regularly is to NOT be a fixer. I’m a guy and, well, it’s often what we do. But, if I step in and fix things, I find myself cutting God out of the relationship with my daughters. It’s good that they can come to me in their pain. And it’s important that I walk with them effectively through it. But it’s more His place to show His power to them.
You mention retreats and conferences. Events can often make faith an issue of adrenaline. That scares the crap out of me. Faith isn’t an emotional thing. I think it is a more foundational thing than emotions.
I was counseling a fellow student in my school program. Not formally. Just helping her with a struggle. She had failed the licensing exam several times. She was desperate for some feedback. She told me that she feels like, if she only could trust God more, maybe He’d come through. Trust Him more… Over the next 30 minutes (FB Messenger), I asked her what it would look like to trust Him more. Why she doesn’t trust Him. She said she does, but it doesn’t seem enough. I asked her how much she trusted her husband. She said “completely.” I asked her why… She said, “Because we’ve been together and I know his intentions for me are good.” So, I asked her, “He’s proven himself to you time and time again. Hasn’t God done the same thing, if you think about it? Your passing the test has nothing to do with Him toying with you or you not trusting Him enough. He just IS. He just DOES. He loves you and wants you to kick butt on the test.”
She passed on her next attempt.
We need to see Him come through for us. Your daughter needs to see Him do the same. I do not doubt that she knows who He is and what He has done for her. Not at all. I don’t doubt that she knows him as her Savior. Help her to take His hand.
#3 by Doug Mitchell on August 24, 2014 - 12:07 pm
Mindy, I enjoyed reading your blog. It oozes great questions and authenticity.
By way of introduction, we have a mutual friend in Derek Wittman, I have 2 kids, a boy aged 17, and a daughter 14. You can read my blog about parenting here: http://hanginginmidair.wordpress.com/about/
The difficult thing about the abstract nature of digital communication is that I really don’t know you. I am responding to to what you have written-from the perspective of my own interpretation. So you may find what I write here useless…and that’s ok.
Ages 14-17 really stink. It’s an emotional roller coaster with all kinds of biology, sensitivity, and nonsense, mixed with really good and deep questions. Being a parent is like walking through a minefield then. You can see the consequences of the decisions the kids contemplate and verbalize…and you want to react, to protect or correct them before they careen down the road without hitting the brakes at the stop signs. It can be gut churning. And 2 years feels too short.
You haven’t failed. Your daughter is not a report card on you. Anyone who seeks to make her your report card should be considered toxic.
The association of fathers with God is real, and she has real reasons to ask her questions and a valid and deep well of anger.
She has a real Father. He IS real, and He is not put off by her anger. He also welcomes her questions. He is patient beyond all understanding and he isn’t going anywhere while she shakes her fist and searches for answers. He cares for her beyond her understanding.
I submit that our job as parents may not be to surround them with enough Christian culture that they absorb it by osmosis. I have come to believe that we often engage in making our faith a brand…and our kids have a brand called “Christian” that in reality is not that much different than “Hurley,” or “Aeropostale.”…we walk around shocked that the brand we’ve given them does not protect their spirits.
Our job is 1) to nurture their hearts. After all, when our kids make a confession of faith, their hearts are made new-In many cases we hippocritically say they belong to Him, but then spend years striving to establish our own control over them. 2) To shepherd a relationship with their Father, and to have them live in the freedom He brings.
Here’s the thing. As Lewis pointed out…The Father is not necessarily a safe guy. He, after all wired, our kids, and some of the wiring He gave them may be counter to American Evangelical culture. And that’s OK-He did the wiring.
Your daughter seems like you in many ways…she sounds like she wants to cut through the bullshit. Trouble is (and she may not have words to give this) the bullshit is mostly part of what we have come to define as righteous Christian living. When we train them in the way they should go…I believe it involves their unconventional gifts and questions too. We are to teach them how to gain the most from their gifts, expectations of the deacons be damned.
Most of our youth groups are so ill equipped to answer hard questions, it’s pathetic…and your daughter has some scary serious questions. Her frustration at finding authenticity is understandable.
I’m afraid none of what I am saying is out of a cookbook. It’s hard and there are no guarantees bad things won’t happen. But I would ask you to consider this: What if you took off the “brand?” Stopped requiring attendance or participation in entirely “Christian” activities, groups and events? The Father will not depart. She may wander into some really frightening places spiritually…and those folks who love the “brand” may express to you their concern. The Father will not desert her, neither will you. ( I do not advocate that you stop placing safe boundaries on conduct, etc. But I do advocate that you discuss them openly and answer every question that begins with “why?”)
I think our kids are best served as we transform from protectors and behavior modifiers into advocates, amplifiers, and resources. It makes it easier for us to be fellow travelers, and it allows us to exemplify relationship. And what we really want so deeply is to see them in relationship with the Father.
Hope that helps
#4 by malindar on August 24, 2014 - 8:27 pm
It does help. It’s funny…so much of what you said not only resonates with me, but seems like you’re speaking right out of my brain (and I can see why you and Derek are friends 🙂 ). So much questioning goes along with parenting, and so much of what we have to do is just WAIT. And TRUST–our kids, our decisions, but mostly God.
I am not unlike my daughter: I have some serious trust issues.
But I’m working on it. And I’m doing a lot of standing back and watching and listening and loving. I feel like that’s more of my job lately than instructing, which is a difficult transition. I’ve always said, “I’m raising future adults, not children.” I believe that. But it sure is harder than that little statement would lead one to believe.
Thank you for your words. I will be re-reading them.
A lot.
#5 by Doug Mitchell on August 24, 2014 - 8:56 pm
I’m honored…
#6 by Roman Hokie on August 24, 2014 - 9:53 pm
I love that I have good friends that I can introduce to one another who understand grace, despite different roundabout ways of getting there.