So, before I start talking, since this is rather critical to the story, I’m going to have to come out and admit something. I’m seventeen years old. I’ve tried to keep that to myself on this blog as much as possible, because I want my thoughts to be taken seriously and very few people do that with a teenager. It colors their perspective.
But to the point. In my church, there’s a section of the pews that’s set aside for the youth to sit. Now, my church’s youth have a pretty scanty attendance record. Usually it ends up being just me sitting there, and the other people who come regularly sit with their parents. Recently though, occasional people have started sitting in the pews, much to my distress. The youth had stopped going to church so much that people had forgotten that that was where the youth sat. Last week a mother and her two daughters had sat there, this year the same family was there but with another woman, the children’s other mother, I assume. I was sitting there last Sunday, feeling angry and bitter and resentful and sad. How dare those people sit in those pews? (Now, I know this sounds silly. But those pews are a symbol, they’re a place where youth can sit separate from their parents, so that they begin to commune with the worship on their own, individual basis rather than because of their parents. It’s also a safe place for youth to sit who perhaps aren’t there with their parents and don’t know where else to go, a place where youth don’t feel strange going to church because they know there are others like them. It’s a type of fellowship. But anyway.) And how could the youth just leave, be part of a church that they didn’t want to spend time at? I knew it was rather irrational but I was upset.
But I calmed down and tried to let my heart be open to God. I began to see that this was an opportunity, for friendship, to show those girls a teen role model in church. I realized that God placed them there and that while I might not know what for or what can come out of it, it is an opportunity that he has given me. I was at peace and happy when I realized that, and now am glad that that’s family there. For God can show us another way of looking at the same thing, and give us His perspective, instead of our own flawed one.
I would never have taken you for 17 but that won’t change what I think of what you write. It is my contention that one of the good things that comes from divorce is that parents learn to actually hold conversations with their kids rather than assuming only adult conversations are of value and kids find it natural to express their own thoughts and ideas around adults. I enjoy conversing about life with my kids and hearing their perspectives. I learn much from them.