i loved your kids
I worked with teens at our church from my own teen years until almost the age of 40. I'd love to gather all their parents somehow and say, "I loved your kids! And, whatever your experience with them was, I feel fortunate because I suspect I got their best. As an adult who had no temporal authority over them, I got their deepest and truest thoughts, their most uninhibited laughter, their fresh insight. I loved every minute of it."
I got probing questions about the big-brush issues like how we know there even is a God at all, and the most fine-point issues like whether the Salmanticenses were heretical, and all in between. I got the most direct please-help-me pleas like "I've started doing drugs and I'm not sure my parents know but I'm not sure I can quit," and roundabout inquiries about whether this or that constitutes rape or whether I think smoking marijuana is a sin. (I derived great pleasure from dispensing guidance that, if followed, would lead kids toward a long, healthy, Christ-loving future with no baggage, without ever nagging or resorting to because-I-said-so.)
Most of all, I just got to see them being themselves, trying on different selves to be, and interacting with each other.
God designed these people to be choosing careers and getting married and establishing households and bearing children during their teen years; we have placed a near-impossible burden on teens by denying and delaying those steps. Nearly every clucked-over pathology attributed to teens can be traced to the frustration of those very real —– biologically-mandated —– urges to live in one's own space and deal with the opposite sex and take care of babies and escape parental authority and make one's own decisions.
Merely respecting them, respecting the fact that they are fully people, respecting their interests, respecting this burden society has placed on them, will buy us all much. I always tried to do so with the kids I worked with, and, goodness, I hope I can remember to with my own children, which as we all know isn't guaranteed.
Meanwhile, I cherish those generations of kids, now adults with their own kids. I loved getting up early in the morning for them, staying out late with them, ingesting probably half a ton of semi-good food with them at EZs and Alamo Cafe, studying and studying to bring solid and memorable teaching to them. Most of all, I loved your kids. I saw many of them at their best, and I loved them.
I got probing questions about the big-brush issues like how we know there even is a God at all, and the most fine-point issues like whether the Salmanticenses were heretical, and all in between. I got the most direct please-help-me pleas like "I've started doing drugs and I'm not sure my parents know but I'm not sure I can quit," and roundabout inquiries about whether this or that constitutes rape or whether I think smoking marijuana is a sin. (I derived great pleasure from dispensing guidance that, if followed, would lead kids toward a long, healthy, Christ-loving future with no baggage, without ever nagging or resorting to because-I-said-so.)
Most of all, I just got to see them being themselves, trying on different selves to be, and interacting with each other.
God designed these people to be choosing careers and getting married and establishing households and bearing children during their teen years; we have placed a near-impossible burden on teens by denying and delaying those steps. Nearly every clucked-over pathology attributed to teens can be traced to the frustration of those very real —– biologically-mandated —– urges to live in one's own space and deal with the opposite sex and take care of babies and escape parental authority and make one's own decisions.
Merely respecting them, respecting the fact that they are fully people, respecting their interests, respecting this burden society has placed on them, will buy us all much. I always tried to do so with the kids I worked with, and, goodness, I hope I can remember to with my own children, which as we all know isn't guaranteed.
Meanwhile, I cherish those generations of kids, now adults with their own kids. I loved getting up early in the morning for them, staying out late with them, ingesting probably half a ton of semi-good food with them at EZs and Alamo Cafe, studying and studying to bring solid and memorable teaching to them. Most of all, I loved your kids. I saw many of them at their best, and I loved them.
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