The myth of the easy teenage years

There are parenting books that have been popular for the last 20 years, that tell new moms and dads that they can guarantee a smooth teenager experience if they just follow their simple rules for controlling their babies and toddlers. The "teen" years are a myth, and the "generation gap" is a lie. For good Christian emphasis, they'll add "from the pit."  The teenage boy and teenage girl will sail from childhood into adulthood without a scrape, never questioning the parents, sweetly submissive doing chores just to see mom smile.

I just threw up a little into my mouth.

I wanted to believe it.  Who wouldn't?

Yet I am reminded of the emerging seedling, which must break through a hard outer shell and struggle upward to sunlight and moisture that will grow it into a strong plant.  The chick also escaping a shell with a fight, quickly fluffing itself and scrambling around.  The butterfly breaking through the chrysalis then hangs there, sometimes appearing motionless, as it slowly stretches its wings before soaring high above.



For everything there is a season.  If you incubate your emerging person too much, where will the struggle be that tones and strengthens them?  If I try to help the seed, the chick, or the butterfly, I can actually cause it to die with my meddling. I have to just sit and watch it struggle, and hope that it develops perfectly, but I can't really do much about it. I provide the environment and nourishment but it does the growing. The butterfly has to get itself out of the prison it's spun around itself.

I grew up in a Christian home. I went to church. I knew all the verses. I knew the gospel story. I was a child of God, and I was happy.  Then I became a teenager- and I had to start that painful struggling of breaking through to the next stage of development.  It was that struggle that burnished in me the real faith of a tried and tested soul. Without suffering, how can one truly know grace? Grace is a Sunday School word until you have really wrestled with God.  Only through the struggle is grace made real.

Is this completely untrue for you?  Are you a faithfilled person who has only ever known sweet submission and never struggled?  Are you watching your own teenager breaking through a shell? Do you find it hard to keep your hands off, and let them emerge through their own wrestling with God? Sisters, I water and I feed and I make light shine upon them, and I pray for harvest. But the struggle has to be theirs.