My daughter woke up to 120 text messages on her phone this morning. One hundred and twenty.
We go dark in our house about 9pm, so those 120 messages came in sometime between the hours of 9pm and 7am.
Clearly there must have been some great crisis happening overnight in the world of our almost teenage daughters.
Nope.
Just lots of talk about what to wear and boys. Same things you and I talked about when we were in seventh grade. Only we had to pick up the phone and could only get the opinion of one friend at a time, until the invention of three-way calling.
Now, I’m about to tell you something that I really shouldn’t tell you. I hope no seventh grade girl reads this. It was my intent to be absolutely anonymous. But the more moms we can get on the team, the better off our daughters will be, so I’m going to tell you.
A few days ago, there was another stream of text messages on my daughter’s phone. One of the girls was distraught about the color of her hair and certain no boy could ever like her or would ever want to touch her because she is so “ugly.” (At this point, I could go on a tangent about why a 7th grade girl would want a boy to touch her, but let’s not go there.)
This girl could not be consoled. Her friends tried to tell her how pretty she is and listed off all of her other great attributes, but this girl would hear none of it. In my mama heart, I knew this hurting girl needed much more than this upside down world could offer.
So I sent her a note. I didn’t sign my name. I simply wrote a little message on a card and asked my daughter to secretly drop it in her locker.
I can’t remember my exact words, but it said something to this effect: “The One who created you thinks you are perfect and beyond beautiful, and His is the only opinion that really matters. God has big plans for your life. Trust Him to unfold great things for you in His perfect timing.”
I have no idea if this girl and her family know Jesus. I don’t think I’ve ever actually met her parents. But it doesn’t matter. Our girls are getting whiplash trying to keep up with the latest and the greatest and newest and the shiniest. They can’t console each other, because they haven’t lived enough life to have the wisdom to do so. But we have. We’ve been there. We’ve fretted over the details and the drama. And we’ve seen how somehow, it all seems to work out in the end.
Clearly, if 120 text messages are floating through space in the middle of the night, girls are looking for answers. They are looking for confirmation that they are not alone, that they are significant, special.
So let’s tell them. Let’s be the village that raises our daughters (and our sons) by encouraging them and nurturing them and reminding them that there is One who can see way beyond these teenage years and His plan for them is good.
