My daughter is 8 weeks old today, which means I am sleep deprived, slightly malnourished, almost always coming down with something, and blissfully unaware of anything except my daughters smile. I know in the back of my mind though that this phase is short and that every day she gets one step closer to the mean world that awaits her. She gets one day closer to boys who want all the wrong things and magazines that tell her she is fat if she wears anything besides a size zero.
It hit me especially hard this morning when I read an article about a teenager girl who feel from her window when asking a boy to delete the dirty video he had pressured her to make. She was once 8 weeks old, she was once cuddled in the arms of her mother safe from the pressures of the world. I have yet to find a way to stop time, and each day that my daughter gets closer to teenagedom I have to ask myself “what on earth am I going to do to make sure she is different.”
How can I make her believe she is beautiful when culture is constantly telling her that she needs to be curvy yet thin, and tall but not too tall, and do it all in high heels that in my opinion are torture devices. It’s too much, at any age the pressure put on teenagers to fit a mold that only a small number happen to fit into is destructive. So where do they tend to go when they don’t fit the mold, the only place that gives them validation that they are in fact pretty enough, boys.
Boys who have grown up in a culture that has told them woman are only good for their bodies, a culture that has typically showed them pornography by the age of four, and a society that finds any and every excuse to put woman in some type of leather onesie. Throw in a few dozen batches of hormones and you have a recipe for disaster.
Every day i read about this disaster, girls are buying the lie that men validate them with sexual love and men buy into the lie that woman are there for sexual purposes only. We don’t need proof that culture is broken, its thrown into our face every day what we need is hope, because facts and realities don’t change the truth that Jesus is the only Savior that can mend our hearts and a culture that is not immersed in that truth is a broken culture.
This is my plan for my daughter, every day I am going to tell her not only how much her father and I love her but how much Jesus loves her. Every day I will do my absolute best to make sure she sees truth in our home. I will be on my knees in prayer for her tender heart that could be crushed so easily. I will show her true love in all its forms by keeping my marriage in tact so one day when she meets a boy she will have a standard he must meet. Because at the end of the day I can’t protect her from everything but I can show her a better way, I can show her a life that is full of love, and I can take the road less traveled and not worry about being her friend but be intentional about being her parent. In the end this might still not be enough, it wasn’t for me, but I still have the hope that Jesus is sovereign and he can use even the most grotesque of situations for his good.
Psalm 42:5
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
The article I read that inspired this post can be found here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/9828589/Children-and-the-culture-of-pornography-Boys-will-ask-you-every-day-until-you-say-yes.html
Rae Ann - I am a mother with a 12 year old and an 8 year old both are girls. I really enjoyed this. It reminded me no matter how trying things get with your daughter that Jesus is always there to help you through it. Just tell them you love them and show them Jesus and let him do the rest.
Rae Ann - I have a 12 year old and an 8 year old both are girls. This is so true. All we can do is raise them up letting them know they are loved and show them Jesus. Then no matter how hard it gets sometimes always know that Jesus is there, as long as we rely on Him.