Part 2: Our Two Yr Olds are Dating

I mentioned in the last post that our daughters are not going to date, at least in the terms most of us think of, until they move out. I was completely serious.

I hear the initial criticisms flowing so I’ll just list them because five years ago they would have been mine too: 1. You are sheltering your kids. 2. You need to give them independence to make their own decisions. 3. You can’t protect your kids forever. 4. If you do that, when they move out, they will rebel against your strictness and be worse than if you had let them date earlier. 5. They will just do it anyway.

Well. There’s a lot stacked up there. I understand. However. We’ve got to dig deeper and not live in fear. We also don’t want to make a list of rules and regulations for no reason or because we want to be controlling or to show that we're in charge and they’re not.

If you peel away all the layers and intentions, there is a passionate, deep love for my daughters under there that Jesus himself put in my heart for them. THEY ARE NOT MINE. I have been graced with the infinitely wonderful responsibility of being their mother. But I can’t hold them too tight. And I also, more importantly, we cannot withdraw from good, intentional parenting which comes from listening to the day to day decisions from the Holy Spirit. I have someone to answer to for their little hearts, their little lives, and the things I give them over to. I answer to a God who MADE them! Who knit them in my womb and wrote their lives into existence. He has intentions and plans for them and His ways bring life and peace and hope and joy and FREEDOM.

So with that in mind and with that as the deepest layer on the bottom of this regenerated heart, Jason and I make decisions like this one…our girls are probably not going to date at 12 or 15 or even 17. We don’t know exactly how this is going to work. We don’t know what we’re going to do when they like someone and they come home angry with us that we don’t get it. I don’t think it’s all going to work out perfectly. I know there will be some struggles and some misunderstandings. I know that our children may not know our hearts until they are forty. I know their hearts might rebel from our parenting. But we do not answer to them. We answer to the Lord, whose hearts are His. And after a number of conversations over the years about raising girls, I just don’t have a peace about the world’s ways of dating. It seems pointless and futile and selfish and lustful and ultimately wounding…and a lot of recklessness for a parent to endorse willingly.

I had a friend who once said to me that she didn’t regret having many many dating relationships with men because it taught her what she did and did not want to look for in a husband. I do not buy the lie. I believe that lie led her not to wisdom, but to a long walk through wounds and scars and visually cruel memories for her to sort through over years to come.

I used to have a bumper sticker that said “Kill your television.” Now I laugh about it because I love the food network and the Disney channel. I know that sometimes as Christians we go to extremes and say things like “If you smoke or use curse words you must not be a Christian.” I’ve been wrong and legalistic about countless things. This dating issue with our girls might sound like another one of those things like the television where we throw our hands up and say – There are so many evil things on tv! Let’s ban it! You may hear me saying about dating – There are so many evil things that can happen! Let’s ban it! I’ll just say your thoughts before you think them.

What we really really, from the heart, are trying to do is not just accept cultural norms for our family. What we would like to do with everything lately is to step back from the ever-rushing movement of culture, which is stumbling towards who knows what. We want to be intentional about the ways we are choosing to go and how we decide to live our lives as individuals and as a family. Sometimes the easiest ways are not the wisest ways but the world likes to criticize a step outside normal bounds.

Jason loves kayaking. There are these little pools on the sides of rivers called eddies that you can “catch” and you are completely out of the rush of the current. You can sit there to rest or wait before you pull back out into the river. Jason would tell me about how he would catch the eddies right before he was about to go into the next segment of the river so that he could rest before a more difficult rapid or maybe even pull his kayak over to the side to scout out what was coming up by walking along the river. Certain more difficult class rapids require knowing exactly where to take the rapid, otherwise you can end up caught under a rock or in a “hole” or something else dangerous. It’s the perfect picture of pulling out for a time from what everyone else is allowing themselves to be carried along by, even most Christians, in order to wait and pray and consider what God might have for our family. We know that what is coming down the river is going to be difficult and it would be foolish to make rash decisions in the midst of the rapid.

We know that Jason “dating” our daughters is part of us scouting out a rough rapid ten to fifteen years down the river. We also know that the way that most people take that rapid is the same – let teenagers choose who they will date, how they will date, where they will go and how late they will be out. Um, no. I actually remember being thankful for my curfew (sometimes – he he) because when my friends wanted to take me places that I was scared to go or scared to be a part of, I had a safe “out” and could go home. I was mad at my mom a lot for her rules but I also know it provided a safe house for me and ultimately I know her rules saved me from a lot of wounds that I would have willingly taken.

I think what we will probably be “about” will be our girls building relationships in the context of groups and community. We will make our home hospitable, a place they will want to bring their friends, and although I am well aware our “coolness” will have worn off by then (probably already has!) I will pursue our kids’ friends as much as they will let me. And although I don’t know the details of how this will work, if a boy does take an interest in one of our girls (undoubtedly) then he will certainly have to get to know us and he can expect that we will want his friendship with our daughter to be in a community context and to be within our eye sight. I don’t the exact convictions we will have for them but I know it won’t look like a 16 year old boy showing up at our door, barely telling us his full name, and then watching my daughter get into the car with him to goes who knows where with him for hours on end and then coming home at midnight. My girls can forget that. That makes me want to bite off all my fingernails and toenails.

As far as we can scout out the teenage years now, we are. Mostly by treasuring our daughters, loving them well, and pointing them to an identity in Jesus Christ – who created them by love and for a love relationship with Him first and foremost. In this rooted identity they will always know who they are as they enter womanhood and look towards marriage. Our great hope for their sweet futures is that they create sincere and deep relationships with friends, that they are mentored by older women in their community, that they experience healthy relationships with young men in the context of friendship, and that they grow in wisdom and maturity in their relationship with the Lord so that they would know what He would have for them in regards to being a wife and a mother.

You can either believe in testing out your life with trial and error to find what is right or you can be led by wisdom and maturity when you cannot give yourself that gift. I pray that my girls will allow the second path for their lives and that their hearts would be submissive to the wisdom they do not yet possess for their own hearts and lives. In the meantime, I recognize continually that I, too, need to stay submissive to Christ. I do not know or see or understand or have anything apart from the Vine. I am just a branch. I will abide in Christ and ask and pray that my children choose to abide in Him as well. This is not about me and my great wisdom or plans for our children. This is about Jesus. He loves them and his best for them is greater than mine or theirs. Thank goodness He loves them. He will show us what to do. We will open up our hands, where they rest, and keep surrendering them.