Val & Abby Share Keys to Waiting with Grace, It's a Growth Thing! Episode 96
CLICK HERE to listen to Episode 96, "Val & Abby on Waiting with Grace, It's a Growth Thing! The Conversation a year later."
Images and messages all around us are shouting to our kids, "Your worth is in who is attracted to you" and young ears are NOT immune from these messages either. This pressure is a growing issue affecting the choices our kids are making at every age. As intentional parents, we need to counter the false messages with TRUTH and we need to EQUIP our kids to guard and treasure their hearts.
What does that look like?
How do we equip our kids to focus on growth and becoming who they were created to be rather than who society says they should be and BEFORE they start focusing on what some other person is wanting?
How do we teach our kids to GUARD & TREASURE their hearts?
Are we keeping our target on equipping them with self-worth, self-control, and more?
This is a very big topic that I've been weaving into the fabric of this podcast over the past two years and there's still so much more to share! At the bottom of this blog, be sure to see the links to former episodes of what we've covered so far. The topic will be on-going, so keep watching for more!
Last week, in episode #95, you listened to a conversation between me and my daughter Abby (at the time of recording she was a sixteen-year-old junior in high school). The conversation continues this week, recorded a full year later, in our episode this week, episode #96. Abby shares some keys that helped her slow down this process, how she waited a little longer than society around her to open the door of her heart to the complex world of romantic relationships, and what important purposes she was focusing on during the waiting.
She hasn't waited sequestered in her house, staring out an attic window, like the fairy tale character Rapunzel, in the movie Tangled. No, there has been important work to do in the waiting - there are vital GROWTH purposes in WATIING WITH GRACE.
It’s not really just about WAITING a little longer, it’s about PREPARING for something that is valuable, and it's about BECOMING who God created UNIQUE YOU to be, not just becoming who someone else is attracted to or that would gain the approval of a romantic interest.
CLICK HERE to listen to episode 96,
Now, for my blog post about Waiting with Grace...
There’s lots of important things in life that are better when we wait a little while.
When we’re going to have a baby, we don’t get that little one the next day. We typically wait nine months; and those nine months are important for growth, not just in our baby, but growth in ourselves. We’ve got lots to do to prepare for our little one –🍼we have a baby shower to collect clothes, 🍼we decorate a room, 🍼we pick out a car seat and stroller, you’re all moms, you know what ALLL we gather in preparation. 🍼But we also prepare our hearts for our new role. They're some BIG concepts – thinking of loving someone MORE than our own self, caring for someone 24/7, whether we feel like it or not, whether we are tired or sick or isolated or overwhelmed… motherhood changes everything and that requires preparation. God made it that way on purpose.
Do you know God also said, in Song of Solomon 8:4, “Do not awaken love before it’s time.” He was saying, "Wait a minute. Slow down. Let’s make sure you’re ready for this."
All amazing and wonderful and exceptional things in life require some preparation, which also means waiting, which also means anticipation of what you’re waiting for. And there's a lot of character development that can happen in waiting.
I’m pretty sure all of us mamas, if our kids get married, we long for our kids to have healthy, strong, happy marriages. But do we put enough thought into the preparation for their marriage and for the relationships that precede marriage? When should that preparation begin? When they get engaged is the typical timeline. I want to suggest something atypical to you. That is, preparation for healthy dating relationships and marriage needs to start at a very young age. Technically, it HAS started. Your kids ARE getting messages about romance, dating, and marriage. The question is, are any of those messages coming from you?
Our kids are receiving messages about relationships from the world constantly. They see messages📢 in their movies,📢 in their friends' parents relationships,📢 in their older siblings' or aunts' or uncles' dating relationships,📢 in songs on the radio…. Messages about romance, dating, and marriage are everywhere every day.
IF OUR KIDS ARE RECEIVING MESSAGES ABOUT ROMANCE, DATING, and MARRIAGE from the world, don’ you think YOU should have a clear message as well?
What is your message?
What do you believe about romantic relationships for your kids?
What age is ok for this to begin?
What boundaries should exist in this at each age?
You are not going to have the same beliefs that I do, not the same boundaries for them. But I at least want to encourage you to give this topic the attention it deserves.
Let me ask you a question: How much have your dating and romantic relationships from the past impacted your life? Has it been a significant impact? If so, don’t you think, as we equip our kids for life, that we should be INTENTIONAL with this impactful area of life?
To me, this is too important of a topic to say, “Ah, they’ll figure it out, trial and error.” Yes, there are many lessons for them to learn from experience, but first, wouldn’t it be best to prepare them as best we can? We don’t hand them keys to a car and say, "Go, learn from your mistakes." No way, there’s too much at stake! They can hurt the car. They can hurt themselves. They can hurt others as they experience trial and error. So, before we let them sit in the drivers seat alone, learning from their mistakes, we sit with them. And before we sit with them, they sit with us, and we have them read a drivers manual. There are stages of preparation for the important things in life. (I’d love to go over with you the stages of preparation, but that will have to be a topic for another day.)
Last week, in part one of this series, the conversation with my daughter Abby happened a year ago when she had just turned 16 and was headed into her junior year. Now, today’s conversation is a year later, as she heads into her senior year. It's very interesting to hear how her confidence has changed in that year and how the atmosphere among her friends has changed over that year's time. We don’t specifically talk about it in this conversation, but I’ll just fill you in that now she is at a place spiritually, emotionally, and just in general maturity, that she would be ready for a romantic relationship and she would handle it well. That made the wait worth it.
Just think, she didn’t 💘wound any other hearts over the last few years and 💘she didn’t experience a bunch of silly regrets from impetuous, immature romantic relationships, or 💘worse-than-silly regrets.
She spent that time instead developing her
life interests and career pursuits,
her passions and perspectives,
expanded her worldview.
learned to be a really good friend,
learned how to develop deep friendships that are mutually edifying,
had time to learn God’s heart on these topics,
had time to ESTABLISH HER OWN BOUNDARIES and her own perspectives about romance and dating BEFORE she is in situations that would tug at her emotions,
had time to develop SELF-CONFIDENCE and SELF-WORTH - both very important ingredients in a dating relationship so that the decisions made in that relationship are ones that have HER best interest at heart, that reflect HER values and not the desires of someone else superseding her perspective. Low confidence and low self-worth have led to many unfortunate outcomes in dating. So, she isn’t likely to give in to something she doesn’t want to do out of a NEED to be validated in that way.
While I am mentioning unfortunate outcomes, another benefit of waiting a little longer to start dating means that she has lea