Fifteen

Do you ever wish God would send you a note so you would know what to do in a given situation?  Well, He seems to have sent me one today.

My planner had the following quote today:  “ If someone talked to you the way that you talk to yourself, you would have kicked them out of your life a long time ago. “

I’ve been  having a lot of those conversations with myself lately. Conversations where all I can think about is what I did wrong, what I said to people, what people have said to me, and I beat myself up over and over about it. Tapes play in my head repeating every stupid thing I’ve ever said or done.  Every embarrassing moment . Every careless thing I’ve said that I wish I could take back.  Replaying moments that I’ve hurt people.  Replaying moments where they’ve hurt me and all I could do is try not to cry. 

This week it has been hard being a fifteen-year-old girl. Every problem I face, every moment that doesn’t go the way I wanted it to, seems like the biggest problem in the world with eternal consequences. These problems aren’t life threatening problems, not problems that will mess up my future, so why are they ruling me?

I have absolutely no idea.

I keep asking people older and wiser than I am, “Did I handle that situation right?” panicked that I messed up, ruined a friendship, or missed an opportunity. 

Their reply?   “You are fifteen.  There is no way to handle every situation perfectly.  This is your time to mess up, make a fool of yourself and learn from your mistakes. Learn young while the consequences aren’t so great.”

So maybe this  feeling that I can’t get things quite right is just part of being fifteen.

I don’t want to be a hypocrite

Remember the post from a couple of days ago when I lost my phone? Well, it happened again. I got my phone back Tuesday, and just had it taken away on Thursday morning. You’re wondering what I did to deserve this, aren’t you? I did the exact same thing as I did on Monday; I texted during school hours. I was making plans to go see a movie that night with a friend, when I was supposed to be focusing on my school work.

Here’s the part where I would like to say that I received correction from my mother with a godly attitude.

Nope. Both of our ugly sides came out. My mom yelled in frustration. I faced her with an expression on my face that said “Bring it on.” My rebellion didn’t last long. I quickly turned from thinking “this is totally unfair” to thinking “ah… I get it now.” My mom punished me, apologized for losing her temper and then praised me for my quick attitude change.

If I’m honest, sharing this with all of my friends is humiliating. It’s so much easier to write about my victories than it is about failure. It’s especially humiliating when my victory post was only 2 days prior to a repeat of the same sin.

But when it all comes down to it, I consider my failure a gift—especially when it’s a repeated failure. Gods Grace is very real to me. I know people who beat themselves up because they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again and don’t believe they can be forgiven. But my repeated failures remind me of my need for my Savior.

Before I decided to write this post, an old Sunday school song was going through my head. It’s called “ I just wanna be a sheep” And the line was “I don’t want to be a hypocrite, cause they’re not hip with it” ( Anybody else remember that song?) 

I’m sharing this with you because now the song going through my head is “Grace Greater than all my sin.”

            “Grace , Grace, God’s grace

            Grace that will pardon and cleanse within.

            Grace, Grace, God’s grace,

            Grace that is greater than all my sin.

…. ALL my sin.  Even the repeats.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I Have an Enemy

I have an enemy. It’s name is Distraction.

This year I have many goals for myself. My biggest goal is having three years of college done by the time I would graduate highschool, which would require passing the accuplacer test with high enough marks to place into pre-Calc at Anoka Ramsey Community College as well as taking more CLEP tests for credit this year. I’d also like to be more scheduled in my blogging, make Varsity next year in at least one of my three sports, and get my drivers license.

This morning, I woke up with a plan for my day. I was going to get up, start my schoolwork and finish it in time for my Ski Meet. I watched my math lesson, sat down on my bed, opened my math book… and promptly grabbed my phone to read my text messages. I knew this wasn’t a good idea. It’s wrong, and it’s against my mother’s rules, and it’s a roadblock to accomplishing what I set out to accomplish. And yet this is a mistake I tend to make over and over again.

I asked a friend who is older and wiser than I am about how he manages to reach his goals without giving in to distraction and he gave me the following advice: Forget about boys, make growing in your relationship with God your first priority and submit to your parents authority because there is a reason God put them in authority over you—you’re not grown yet and you’re bound to screw up.

After that reassuring note, I decided to use his advice to analyze my choices today (right after my mom caught me texting and took my phone away for the day), and came up with a few interesting notes.

·         My major problem is starting any work that requires sustained focus. I will go as far as doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom to avoid my one hour of math homework. This is a constant struggle for me because I have not put the effort into training myself to focus for an extended period of time. I’ve ignored my parents advice to write in my planner, and bring my school out to our living area instead of my bedroom, where I tend to be more distracted.

·         I am a follower, not a leader. My parents always said since I was a little girl, I’d jump off a bridge if my friends told me to. Since I know this about me, I should be surrounding myself with friends who have common goals in order to keep me on track. That doesn’t mean I can’t have fun, but there is a time and a place to goof off, and it isn’t right now.

·         Boys aren’t a problem, because I have made a commitment to myself and to my parents that I will not date until I’m 18.

·         I always feel like I could be stronger in my faith. I know right now I’m really lucky because I have parents who can lead me in that area of my life, and friends who are seeking Him too.

Seeing as though the one area that is not a problem is the boy dealio, and that submitting to my parents authority on the issue of dating is more than likely the reason for this, I can only come to one conclusion:

I need to submit to my parents authority in other areas of my life. Yes, my parent’s have high expectations of me, but they aren’t unrealistic. And I like that they believe in me. I like that they require me to be the best version of myself. I believe them when they say that I will look back on my teen years and be grateful that I pushed myself to succeed.

I plan on beating my enemy with my most powerful weapon available to me: Loving parents with high expectations, and faith that God put me in their care for my own good.

Ephesians 6:1-3    Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right, “Honor your father and mother.”- which is the first commandment with a promise-“that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”