October/November CT Women's Magazine article..

This is my second article in our bi-monthly women's newsletter at church.

Can I take a moment and be real with you? It may hurt a bit, but it’s something worth reading. Sit down a moment, take a deep breath, and brace yourself for an uncomfortable truth.

Your student is likely not ever going to think you are cool. Yep, I said it. I hate that it’s true, but that doesn’t change the reality of it. You, and I, well, to a teenager, we aren’t cool. There’s probably not anything we can do in the way we style our hair, choose our clothes, the music we listen to, the way we speak; none of those things are going to heighten our ‘cool’ factor with our teenagers. And what’s more, the harder we try, the more obvious our efforts are, and the lamer we appear. Yes, I just used lamer in a sentence.

So you might be pretty discouraged right now, wondering the point of this article. Here you thought you were going to be encouraged in your relationship with your teenager and instead I point out the disarming truth about your lack of coolness. Don’t be embarrassed, it’s my lack of coolness, too! Let me salvage this situation and pick you back up off the floor with another important truth about your teenager.

Your teenager doesn’t want you to be cool; they need you to be authentic. They need you to be real. Teenagers are bombarded with fakeness on a daily basis. Every where they turn they see people trying to be something they aren’t. They are constantly told they aren’t good enough the way they are, but they can fake when necessary. They rarely have deep encounters with moral compasses such as truth and love. Seizing opportunities to be authentic will speak volumes into their lives at a critical season of growth.

How does a parent pursue authenticity?

Let them know you aren’t perfect. Exercise dependence on God and do so in a way that your teenager sees you test and grow that dependence. Let them see you defeated, and then show them how to apply the promises of God to your life and try again a second time. Explain to them that you can’t survive the pressures of this world outside of an intimate, personal relationship with the creator of this world. Let them experience love, disappointment, grace, frustration, elation, and encouragement in the safe confines of their relationship with you.

As much as it is important to be authentic with your own life with them, realize they need you to genuinely care about their life as well. When you speak to them, speak the truth in love. When you comfort them, have compassion for their situation and their depth of understanding. When they rejoice, share in their joy. When they walk in to a room and speak to you, stop what you are doing, make eye contact, and begin to genuinely listen. Treat them like they are the most important person in the world in that moment. And really, aren’t they?

Authenticity is a dying art. Students today are aching for truth, and if they don’t find it at home, and in you; they will look somewhere else. Stop trying to be cool with your teenager and focus instead on being real. They don’t need another friend, but they do need the parent that God has called you to be. Above all, pray and seek God’s grace to love your teenagers according to His perfect love. Until next issue…

“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Galations 5:1-2