"Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us daily". ~ Sally Koch
Liddy amazes me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry; I do know I was awed by the way God works in her life & how her gift is maturing before my very eyes.
It has been very evident for some time that Liddy has a gift for missions & evangalization but it just blows me away when I watch her in action. Seriously. I would not consider any boat trip a mission field. You get 20 minutes, give or take the odd minute or two, & my scholarly mind does not consider that long enough to even begin to break the ice but then I am a teacher, line upon line, precept upon precept & none of this fast food attitude to learning thank you very much; rather nutritiously sound lessons taken at regular intervals & well digested. Not Liddy, no. She sees an opportunity & she grabs it!
So I am on a boat with Liddy yesterday because she invited me to go to the mainland church with her. Ditz opted to stay at home, which is interesting as it was one of Ditz's friends who plonked herself in the seat in front of us & proceeded to engage us in conversation. The child is a worse chatterbox than Ditz so I am barely nominally keeping up my end of the conversation while her flibberty~gibbert mind hops from one topic of conversation to another. In all honesty I was just barely paying attention as it had already been a big day, I was tired & trying to follow a conversation over the roar of the engines is always difficult for me. I let the mention of *purity rings* slide past me like the wash from the boat while registering that Ditz's friend didn't seem real keen on acquiring one. Not so Liddy. She pounced.
"Why," Liddy wanted to know, " wasn't she keener on the ring which was being offered to her as a gift?"
Oh well, you know, she wanted to be a *normal* teenager... Yikes! I wasn't touching this one with a barge pole. It was all Liddy's but Liddy was up for it.
"What did she mean by *normal*? If she was a Christian how did *normal* sit with her Christian beliefs? What were those beliefs? But that's not what the bible says...." & Liddy whipped out her bible & moved into the seat beside said child who had simply been making random conversation to pass the time & found herself trapped between Liddy & the window with nowhere to go while Liddy read her way stolidly through Proverbs 7 [that's the one that reads something like My son, stay away from the whore in the low cut gown peddling her wares on the street corner; indeed run fast the other way; I haven't got it quite right but that's the general idea.] Then she flipped over the pages to compare Proverbs 31 [which we all know, don't we girls?] She then proceeded to thoroughly & systematically point out the error of the other's thinking while I waited, fairly sure Lid was going to pull one loose thread too many & the whole thing would unravel in her hands.
Eventually the word *love* got bandied around. Somehow it always does in these conversations & on cue Lid & I both go, "Love is a verb not a feeling." And the unraveling began! How a child who has been in church & Sunday school all of her short life can get to the age she is without even the foundations of the foundation laid beats me. Not a clue, not one, as to why her thinking was worldly & ungodly.
I get so frustrated because I don't feel able to deal with the present issues because there is no firm foundation to build on. I have to go so far back & work my way logically forward but Liddy says it's all about planting seeds. "She might just stop & think the next time a boy asks to pash her."
Might is a very speculative word, not one I like to see attached to spiritual mores like *purity*. When even our *Christian* youth see nothing wrong with the ways of the world & blithely head down that same fast track to destruction what hope do we have as a people? A nation? A church? Ditz's age but the thought of Ditz playing with so much fire just horrifies me beyond words. Fourteen year olds have neither the maturity nor the discernment to navigate the treacherous waters of sexuality where the heart is deceitful above all things. Fourteen years olds are still growing into the sort of person who will be a person of depth & character who will have something more to bring to a relationship than just their body. Fourteen year olds are not children but neither are they mature adults with an adult's wisdom & judgement. And Ditz wonders why I don't want her in school where this is the standard; this is the thinking; this is considered *normal*. Who wants to be *normal*?
12 comments:
Way to go Liddy! :-)
I admit, I'm not that good at sharing in that way [and of course, have found myself smack dab in the middle of something like that recently - aye!] but reading this, how she took the opportunity and may very well have indeed planted some great seeds in that young girl's life, altered her way of thinking... awesome.
Your last paragraph there, Cindy and I were just having a chat about that the other day ~ she finds it *so hard* to believe that there are girls her age out there having sex. [it's part "WHY would they do that?! and part YUCK from her POV] She did spend some years in public school, but came out young enough that she wasn't exposed to much of that -- the whole convo came about because she was sitting here using the laptop and I was flipping channels on the tv.. paused on a show that looked like some kind of "teen drama" thing, wondering what it was [I don't watch a lot of "current" tv shows] and went to the kitchen for a glass of pop - came back to a scene of two teens in bed and Miss Cinders looking over the back of the laptop with her jaw hanging. *sigh* [nothing R-rated, mind you - but certainly out of her realm of "what teens do"] ....turned itself into a lengthy conversation about the choices that many young people make today.
/ramble ramble
ohhhhh grumble grumble says the mother of 3 here........ words fail as to how unprepared for the world most young adults are....and how much of the world they seem to see when much too young.
xc
I'm still at a point where I am not really a sharer so much as a sharee. And as a sharee, I wish that I could have found myself seated next to your Liddy at 14. The world needs pouncers...
What a keeper you have there. Ditz is lucky to have her as a sister too...
Oh Moly! Sympathies my love...
Hojos: I know I've said it before but bringing Liddy home & into the real world was the best thing we ever did...
Allison: & that's fine too...
Jeanne: Yeah, I don't know how she lives with me. ☺ I'm encouraging her to leave Ditz with lots of good memories because by the time she comes home Ditz will be finishing school & a young adult herself. They are lucky to have each other.
You wrote: "Proverbs 7 [that's the one that reads something like My son, stay away from the whore in the low cut gown peddling her wares on the street corner; indeed run fast the other way; I haven't got it quite right but that's the general idea.]" and I lol'd. Oh my, how I lol'd. ;)
You also wrote: "Fourteen year olds have neither the maturity nor the discernment to navigate the treacherous waters of sexuality where the heart is deceitful above all things. Fourteen years olds are still growing into the sort of person who will be a person of depth & character who will have something more to bring to a relationship than just their body." And I thought that there are 24 year olds out there who aren't ready for this sort of thing. (and one 24yo in particular... sigh) That's why the Lord has given us structures and guidelines about these extremely emotional, highly charged things. He knows we can't be depended upon to make the wisest decisions for ourselves, so He helps us out. So sad that the boundaries that He set in place to help us, are looked upon as something to hinder and limit. I think every neighborhood needs a Liddy♥
Might do absolutely NO good. Might have changed her life. Either way, Liddy is admirable. :)
How kind of the Lord to provide you with such a memory and the assurance of how well Liddy has been prepared for the work she has ahead of her.
I worked with way too many "normal" teens in churches and I really want an abnormal daughter.
Persuaded: Beware my paraphrases. ☺ Liddy rather oggled at me when I asked was that the one in those terms but there's no doubt that that's what it means. Know what you mean about the other but by God's grace even my oldest will eventually mature.
MrsC: I know. I saw no window of opportunity; Liddy saw everything.
Seeking: I've had more *normal* ones. Abnormal is good.
Hi Ganeida,
Liddy will do well in the mission field - she sees the opportunity and seizes it with both hands. :D
Have a great week,
Blessings,
Jillian
It's exceptional at that age to speak up without hesitation and perhaps better taken from one as young as Liddy than us older adults. I just think it cool how God speaks through all ages and has gifted us all individually. This is a topic my 10 and soon to be 14 year old are on often...I think I was still playing baby dolls-innocently that is!
As Jan Lyn said, it's wonderful that Liddy stepped in. The girl was more apt to listen to a fellow "peer" as opposed to us old fogies that couldn't possibly know how they feel! (Ha, if only they knew that we once had raging hormones as teenagers too!)
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