Seven Short Years
Many of my closest friends, and indeed the two ladies that I call my “big sisters,” are in the stage of life where they are raising teenagers; some have seen their kids graduate high school and move into navigating early adulthood. It recently occurred to me that for all the stuff said about raising teenagers, the teen years are merely a fleeting seven years.
You spend nine years raising a child, then they are a preteen for three years, then the teenage years hit, and in seven years they’re gone. I’ve heard a lot of advice given to parents about embracing the stage you’re in; to me, it sounds like good advice. Embrace the days that after church you make a B-line out of the sanctuary to go “kill a teenager”. Embrace the days that you have a teenager that wants to stay in bed another five minutes, but they need to be dressed and ready to leave so you can be somewhere in less than two hours. Embrace the days after you’ve worked all day, and you come home to them sitting against a wall with a baseball bat in hand.
Yes, I was the one holding the baseball bat. I don’t know how many times this one event was brought to my remembrance over the last thirtyish years, and often asked the question “Why?”. It’s crazy to think that it’s been thirty years since I was in junior high. There’s very little I remember of the specific details that was going on in my life that made threatening my mom with a baseball bat make sense. It would be several years before I’d see that baseball bat again.
I remember having a lot of hurt, anger, and just feeling lonely; losing my dad at fourteen and my grandad at eight, along with three other family members. For the thirteen years I was in school, I was never in one school for more than two grades. The idealistic story of the kids you went to school with, in kindergarten, are the same kids you graduated high school with, never happened for me. By the time I was in junior high, the sad truth is, the closest thing I had to a friend back in those days were school counselors, mental health professionals, and the occasional school staff member. I often came home to an empty apartment, with mom at work, and when she did get home, we often argued over doing homework; which I didn’t see the point of going to school for eight hours and then coming home and spending the rest of the night doing “schoolwork”.
They say, “It takes a village to raise a kid”, and that’s why during baby dedications at church, we often see not only the parents taking vows, but the whole congregation. After my Aunt Cleda May moved out of state, we didn’t go to church, so we didn’t have that built-in community that churches often offer. Aside from my grandmother helping my mom buy a van, my mom had very little help from her family, and considered herself not only divorced from my dad, but divorced from anyone he called family. I feel for any single parent out there who is raising their kids with little to no support structure; it’s hard to be everything for your kid.
To every teenager out there growing up with a mom and a dad in your home... You’re blessed! To every teenager out there whose parents take them to church and have that community to help raise you... You’re blessed! To every teenager that has one, two, or several close friends... You’re blessed! To every teenager that grew up in a home with Christ-like parents that taught you the bible, and showed you by example what walking out your faith looks like... You’re blessed! To every teenager that has been baptized in Jesus name, and filled with His spirit and spoken in tongues... You’re blessed!!
...And for all the parents that are raising teenagers and sometimes grumble about raising teenagers... Remember it’s only seven short years. Embrace this season in your life, because one day you’ll likely give them away to a man or a woman and think back to these days and remember when they were just a teenager.