As i left the meeting a student came to me and confessed she tried to discourage her friends but didn’t take it a step further to tell an adult. This sparked a conversation about the why behind the necessity to tell others when your friend is in trouble. It was beautiful for that moment and once again confirmed to me that teenagers really do want to do the right thing… some are more successful at it then others.

When you remove the “do this because i said so” or the don’t do this because i said so” and explain to them what the heart of the matter is and the how doing the hard thing (which is often the right thing to do) will actually be helpful and maybe lifesaving for their friends they will find the strength to do it.

Teenagers are often wiser then the are given credit for and if they truly believe they will be validated for it they will walk in that wisdom. Together we will do a better job of keeping their friends safe from drugs then either of us trying to fight the battle alone.

Equip your teen with the right knowledge and response, not just because you said so. help them understand the brokenness that follows drug addiction, and that drug addiction does not require long term use, and yes even marijuana is addictive to teens who use it as a sense of escape.

then again, an aftershock for a country and a nation. as I stood in front of these students and say: “haiti had another earthquake last night” i could see their face grieve and yet not be able to comprehend what might be left. 

while many of these students donated money through their cell phones, and churches, and other organizations there is a greater response stir in them.  One of gratitude for the little things: a bed, shoes, clean forks, water fountains, snacks, a chair, for the unneeded things: ipods, cell phones, jewelry,fancy purses, make-up  and recognition of the big things: breath, solid ground, their families, safety, and love. 

I often wonder in the light of tragedy like haiti, what can i do.  After this week i believe sometimes it is not about me leaving the place i am to help, but helping in the place i have been put by God. For me helping my students understand the depth of the need and the at the same time calling them to a heart of gratitude has been a powerful response. 

So rarely are students called outside of their comfort zones, but watching them freely move out of it to both a place of grief and gratitude has been confirmed to me that this time my proper response was to stay. 

please continue to pray for haiti and for the teens who a struggling with the reality of depravity in their own lives.

I am amazed at how often i can speak to a teenager about something and yet it never seems to register, like the listen but how to put it into action doesn’t really make any sense. Yet when their friends are completing the task, the pop right into place. i have always known that peer pressure existed but it always seemed like a bad thing to me. Below is an journal entry that i wrote after seeing peer influence work for the good. This was one of the first experiences that opened my eyes to the true power of peers.

March 16th 

Today I stood in the back row of children’s church and I watched a sixth grade boy help is friend worship the Lord.  It was amazing.  You see I had tried to encourage this young boy to jump up and down and praise God like the other kids but he simply told me no.  I was discouraged and wondered why, my gentle ushering could not encourage the boy.  He stood still in a crowd of his hyperactive peers, surrounded by shouting, clapping, and dance this boy was a statue.  I wondered what was on his mind or what would cause a child to refuse the opportunity to play.  The music changed and the worship leaders asked the children to calm down and raise their hands to the Lord.  The change in the crowd was remarkable.  The energy levels remained the same and yet the energy was being funneled out in a different form; Raised hands, kneeling children, joyful voices, and prayerful hearts.  The little statue was still standing strong. Then it happened…. This sixth grader walked two steps over to his statuette friend and picked up his hands.  There was no conversation, no suggestion, no “leading by example”.  What the one could not do for himself someone else did for him.  It was a break through.  The rest of worship both boys stood with their hands to the Lord!

God calls us to support our brothers and sisters in Christ.

no today is about looking in the eyes of a teenager who is desperately ill, and knowing that there are no words to help and no solution to offer. I spent part of my weekend with a friend i have known for 12 years. since she was a little girl. now before her 21st birthday she is faced with an illness that is tearing down her body. To most she looks normal, beautiful actually. but i can see the parts of her that are fading away and struggling to hold onto some of her physical identity.

As i listened to her detail the last year and months of her life, i was in awe of her request. She spoke to me about her physical body being nothing more then a tent for her soul to rest in while she was here on earth. and that her true home was in heaven and the security of her identity and being wasn’t in a physical body but in her heart. This body is nothing to me, she said, if my heart isn’t healed. Her only request is that her heart find the healing it needs from this experience.

one part of her is trying to figure out what to do after college for her career and the other part struggles with the truth that those days may never come. She speaks of understanding true hope and a desire to draw so deep into the wealth and richness of God that she will be able to touch the essence of his love while still here in her earthly tent.

She is not normal she is extraordinary, she lives to serve others, spends time and energy in trying to create a better place for those in need, loves unconditionally, has the purest of hearts, is focused and committed to the cause of Christ. i would be lying to you if i told you that i understood why God choose her, or that i could see good in this…. not that anyone deserves to walk through this but her….. it seems so unfair, unjust.

My heart is broken. yet I trust, though i do not understand, that the good Hand of My God is upon her. I see in her strength that has nothing to do with her physical abilities, i see the beginnings of peace all wrapped up in Hope.

I believe the human heart is stronger then we will ever know when it is able to rest in and draw it’s strength not from the things of this world but the very words and breath of God. There is a healing that is far more important then the healing of our physical bodies…. the healing of our hearts. If you are hurt or depressed or angry or broken down and hopeless, pray for the healing of your heart. Seek out someone who can help you find healing for your heart. Your physical body is nothing more then a tent for your soul.

i sat in starbucks today and was surrounded by a group of teen girls that had the most unique and yet I think all to common dynamic. Even though all the girls were friends there was a definite power struggle in the group for the top of the pecking order.

The lead dog so to say(let’s call her sarah)… started by having a conversation with her parent via cell phone that was filled with disrespect and attitude, only to hang up without saying good-bye (definitely no “I love you”) once she hung up she began swearing about something. As though it was the ultimate act of defiance against her parents. The other girls were a bit shocked by her words by accepting…. After all they can’t be uncool. Over the hour, sarah, barked out commands and would drink the other girls drinks, even after they asked her not to, when the would finally raise their voice at her and rebuke her action again. She would laugh and kinda smirk as though her enire point was to prove she could get this rise out of them. A few girls in their group left, after taking so much of this.  Some of the remaining girls would find time to clumsily drop in a cuss word or two.

Besides the verbal communication the non-verbal was incredible. Though the girls had come to this place together, the sat with their phones texting others who weren’t here, and listening to their ipods. Completely keeping a wall between them.

Time to leave: sarah gets up to go. Gives hugs and farewells as though she was broken to leave these girls she didn’t communicate but commanded.

Once gone, the final remaining girl (samatha) who had thrown around a few cuss words and an attitude that she could care less of the world, had a surprising turn around. . .  Sarah’s gone. Samatha cleans up the seating area rearranges the chairs her peers left out and becomes as polite as you could want from a teen.

In return the other teens. (with sarah gone) it is intreging to me to watch these girls interact with out sarah. They are polite and helpful to one another. No texting, no I pods, sharing. Instead they sit in conversation and review what happened with sarah and the areas they are disappointed in and talking about everyday drama of a teen girl (boysJ )

It amazes me the influence of one teen on others. Have you watched your teen with her friends? When does she loose herself? Does she cause others to loose their identity? Or is she with friends who love her and accept her for who she is? It is girls like sarah who use the sweet and innocent teens to get the dirty work done. They will manipulate and control and power others for their own enjoyment, in the end they have committed no crime and in the process destroyed the integrity and purity of those around them, even at times push girls into smoking, drugs, alcohol use, stealing, and a continued array of poor choices.

Observe your teens friends, talk to your teen, and guard your teen. Her security in her identity this is the strongest weapon she has to with stand peer pressure.  

I have spent many years actively involved in mentoring teen girls, some of which have remained virgins through out their teen years and some who have not. I can tell you from this experience alone that no teen is unaffected by sex. even those that thought they were ready for sex, have come out of the experience with emotional damage after the experience. years later they are struggling through the affects of their choices. 

I have the challenge of speaking to teens about sexual purity and the choice to save themselves until marriage. It often seems like an up hill battle. I tell them one thing and then they walk out of the conference and enter a world that saturates them with a contradicting message.

                          ”We have a very hyper-sexualized media and, concurrent with that a total aversion to giving clear and consistent messages about how you reduce risk,”

– Robert Blum, chairman of the department of population and family health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Look at the way that teens are marketed to. They are sold cloths with pictures of naked teens. Advertisements of teens in sexual positions saturate their magazines and web sites. The tv shows that portray sex among teens rarely explores the dangers or the heart ache that come with it. instead they are happy and life only gets better and the relationships flourish.  These shows often expose teens to ways to hide their activities from parental units, friends, teachers, and other adults. This hiding of their activities bleeds directly into the truth of parent teen relationships.

In a 1995 survey, Blum asked both teens and their parents if the teens had had sex. Half the parents who said their kids were not sexually experienced were wrong. According to a 2003 survey by the Centers for Disease Control, nearly half of all U.S. students in grades 9-12 have had sex.*

If you want to help your teen make wise sexual choices, you need to speak to them about the standards you are holding and why you desire them. Keep an open conversation with your teen about their sexual activity and help them to see that you love them. Building a positive relationship with your child early on will help with there security and identity, giving them the confidence to make choices that they desire, and not choices that are strong influenced by media and peers. 

If you want more about Teen Sex check out this site! Parents and teens answer the same questions. the differences are eye opening, no matter what your view.

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500826.html

Months after coming home i received letters from many of the teens expressing how much they learned and experienced during that time. One girl who lived in hawaii wrote me: “I realize now that i have always been a complainer and here i live in one of the most beautiful places in the world and i have everything i need and i never need to worry about food. I’m so grateful for the blessings of God. I am done complaining.”

The change a missions trip can have on a teen’s world view is incredible. It can also set up a pattern for living life with a focus that is bigger then themselves. 

I have a friend from college who has this mission minded life. She is an incredible emergency room doctor who is committed to serving Christ in her work. I have always told people that if you are going to do med-school you need to do it like trina! She has spent her years of education and first few months as a fellow, serving the Lord. 

Below is the latest letter i have received from her. Thought you would enjoy it!

“Wow, things have been crazy in Malualkon!  I was gone for a week in another town called Rumbek for a Health program meeting and returned last weekend to a cholera outbreak!  We had been following it for the past couple of weeks and had had very few cases in our clinics, but Saturday last week, it hit a large village with no clinic.  We have several of our health workers who are from that village and they came Saturday morning to ask for our help.  We drove the 40 minutes to the village and found 10 people severely dehydrated and almost unconscious.  Cholera is a disease that comes from contaminated water and causes severe vomiting and diarrhea.  An adult can potentially die within 4 hours of starting to become sick!  We set up a clinic in a small store and started IV fluids on everyone.  We moved to church later that day for more space and set up a cholera treatment center for the town.  Since Saturday we have had over 50 admissions for IV fluids and over 150 patients who were treated with oral rehydration salts (ORS) (like gatorade) due to their symptoms and not being quite as severe.  We spent the day Thursday recruiting nurses to staff the facility as cases continued and we were spent as well as the single nurse who was staffing the center at night.  Friday we called together 40 volunteers, 2 from each of 20 villages, to train them concerning prevention of cholera and give them soap, ORS, chlorine to purify the water, and posters to hang up around the villages.  They went out and hopefully will be able to spread the word enough to slow down the spread.  We have only heard of 3 deaths in the villages and only one ocurred in our center…which, is sad, but good numbers compared to those who could have died.  One woman in our center received 19 liters of IVF over 2 days!!!  That is like complete total body water replacement!
Otherwise, things are going well.  I am still enjoying the pace, the people, the work.  I don’t have as many of those “Wow, I’m in Africa” moments, but occasionally.  They usually come with this adorable 4 year old named Josep who comes to the gate and yells for me “cawaja” (white person) then holds my hand as we walk down the road to the clinic.  He is so sweet!  I’ll get a picture.”

                          – Trina Helderman

It is this dilemma of identity that causes the chaos of emotion many freshman go through as they transition into their high school years. Those first few weeks are precious to the choices they will make to the rest of their high school career. I know that this seems a bit intense, but please follow me here for a minute. If a freshman is trying to fit in with a peer group and thus decides to drink, use drugs, or even something as simple as responding  with sarcasm in those first few weeks. . . he or she has set up a pattern for their choices and what their peers can expect of them. If they choose to hold a high standard during those weeks, there is a better chance that this will set a positive pattern for them, and in the end make the choice to hold that high standard easier. With so much pressure to find your identity in this time period students are often willing to try many avenues quickly, hoping that one will fit. 

Along with their desire to fit in is also a desire to be gently guided and encouraged in the way that they should go. Please take the time during these first few weeks to encourage a student. there is so much going on in their world. just a simple “well done”, “I know you can do it”, “it is worth keeping your standard”, or “it will get easier”. 

While this may seem cheesy, I will never forget the voice of a freshman in the Locker room speaking about a junior (aka sarah) who had chosen not to have sex. “I just wish I made the same choice sarah had, because now my boyfriends just assume i want to and when i say no they think it is funny. It is like i have to have sex now because i already did once.”

how my heart broke for this girl. to her she was stuck in her past choice and no longer had the power to say no. (this in itself is wrong, though i fully understand how it becomes more difficult once you have made a poor choice.) 

In the end it comes down to those first choices and being empowered in the midst of your chaos to make a choice that you will be proud to relive again and again. 

Freshman….. so much to define.

What do i mean by the way you speak to her…. well it has everything to do with the time, location and who is involved in the conversation. Try not to blind side her with an off handed comment that has no follow through. below is an excerpt from a blog i read a few days ago. A father took the daughter to the movies for father daughter night! (way to go dad!) ordered some pop corn and sat through a teen chick flick (take one for the team!) However the “highlight” of the evening may not leave his daughter with the warm fuzzy he was hoping for.

                  ” The best part for me was the character of Carmen who is chubby like a lot of Hispanic girls get.  When my daughter kept reaching into our communal popcorn tub a little too much, I used Carmen’s weight problem to open up a dialogue with my daughter.  I told her “I bet Carmen pigs out on popcorn too” and I could tell it made an impact.”

I have no doubt that this statement made an impact on this young girl. I really don’t believe it was a positive one thought. She has directly associated her actions (eating popcorn with dad at the movies) with my father thinks i’m chubby. these one line confrontations DO NOT work with young girls. their identity is so intertwined with their actions and performance that they immediatly judge themselves by every past and current action that is similar to the one they were just called on. a Girl needs to talk out their feelings about an issue needs affirmation that they are loved in-spite of an apparent flaw. and that you see their beauty beyond physical appearance, but it is their health you are concerned about.

Fathers if the mother of your daughter is in the picture and she has a rational view of weight and health,  I highly recommend that she be the one to approach your daughter on this. remember dad you set the standard for what a girl will expect from future boyfriends and one day a husband. if your daughter feels she has disappointed you with her weight, she will try to control her weight anytime there is a future stress in her relationship with you or her boyfriends or her husband. 

The best way to talk to your daughter about sensitive issues is to find a location she is comfortable, where there is no chance of her friends appearing and catching part of the conversation. (this may be as simple as sitting at the foot of her bed at night time, or going for a hike, or maybe a remote coffee shop) be direct, not sarcastic, and don’t beat around the bush. your daughter needs to hear your concerns as concerns not some sort of joke. (if she knows you are concerned about her that is much different then my father thinks i am a joke.) give her ample time to talk ask engaging questions (stay away from yes and no questions) make sure you plan enough time to have this conversation. revisit it. give your daughter a few days to think about what you have said then simply ask her: “have you thought anymore about our conversation?” “what conclusions have you come to?”

As always remember you are her father. no one else. She needs you and you have the power to mold the woman she is becoming.

In July of 2006 Rob Bell when on a national tour, stopping in 25, cities called Everything is Spiritual. This Tour and corresponding DVD focus on the reality that our spiritual life can not be disconnected from our physical life. While the front end of the video is science heavy and detailed to specific sciences at times it is still entertaining to non-science minded viewers. 

It has a powerful message that bring to life the reality that God is in every atom of our body, as well as the very essence of the universe. Rob reaches outside of the box and challenges your thoughts and perceptions of what reality really is.

It would make an incredible family movie, (for school age students — 8 and above) Rob is entertaining and challenging enough for the entire family. He adds humor into the serious moments and simplifies complex into demonstrations that are graspable by various ages. 

Why is this video important to me? When i talk to teenagers they often have very little grasp that what they do has spiritual consequences. It is as though they have been given a list of sins and if what they are doing doesn’t fit that list perfectly then it must not actually effect they relationship with God or their over all spiritual and emotional health. 

Teens are constantly being sold a life style that says what they do today doesn’t have any effect on your life tomorrow or even your life today at a different time. When you can expose the truth that everything matters, even if they don’t get caught, you will see the heart of your teen change. You want your teen to think before they act… teach them that their actions matter.