Imma be real, real early on in this post: our young, tween, teen, junior high and high school, girls need help.
Sex is everywhere. And our girls are feeling it. They are feeling the pressures to look and act and be perfect. They are eating up the lies fed to them every day from Instagram to romantic comedies that their bodies, our bodies, are only meant for one thing. That their bodies have to be and look a certain way or they won’t fit in. That they were created not for His good and in His image, but only to wear skimpy bikinis, tight tops, or perfectly ripped up jeans while sipping on a Starbucks frappacino.
Ladies, our girls have fallen into the trap. We have fallen into the trap. I have fallen into the trap. The trap that is so hard to get out of. The trap that is sneaky and cruel and belittling and conniving. And we haven’t stopped it. We haven’t even tried to save them.
So now we are in a battle for our little girls’ souls. We are in a battle for our girls’ hearts.
And we need to step up and fight with them. We need to step up and be a model for them. We need to sit them down and look them in the eye and tell them, “You are enough, just the way you are.”
I never really liked junior highers. They are in that stage of wanting to still be their weird selves yet fit in with what Instagram has posted on its featured page. I just never thought I would understand them. But God was up to something when a mentoring position opened up for an 8th grade small group at my church. And then when one of my middle school teachers asked me to sub for her middle school classes three days straight. Because now, those girls have my heart. Now that generation has my full attention.
Because life is so confusing at that age. You’re just a girl walking down the 6th grade hallway, then suddenly boys start sending you messages on AIM and pushing you on the playground, and every girl around you is either ditching the sport bras and suddenly has all the guys attention or out of no where boys seem cute instead of gross- oh wait, that was when I was in middle school.
Now at that age, now our middle schoolers lives are still confusing, but a heck of a lot worse. There is no more AIM as a way to talk with boys, but Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, influencing our girls’ thoughts and actions at every turn. And that is only to name a few. And girls aren’t just ditching the sports bras, but they are embracing the push-ups and crop tops. And boys never went from gross to cute, they went from gross to the only reason girls should want to get up in the morning. The only reason the girls dress the way they do. The only reason a girl is a girl in the first place.
Our girls, your daughters, my peers, my junior high girls, are being told over and over, at school, on TV, from every corner in cyberspace, that they have one thing to flaunt and one thing only. That they can use their bodies to get what, where and when they want. Oh, and it better look this way and be dressed in this style.
And all of that is lies. Every single last word. Because our girls were and are created to live in His marvelous light. Our girls were and are created to be who their Creator made them to be. Our girls are not their own. They are His. They are loved. They are wanted. They are chosen. Yet, the world seems to be screaming its “truth” a little louder than we older women of Christ are proclaiming His. And that needs to stop.
I am not really sure what I wanted to come out of this post. I guess I just want women, women 23-83, to step up and BE a woman of God for our girls. We women need to step up and fight for our girls’ hearts.
We women need to step up and show our girls that our, their, bodies our not our/their own. That we were not created as a woman to be put down but to stand, strong and fearless in the name of the Lord.
We women need to step up and be there for our girls. We women need to pour all His truth into the generations after us because they need us. Our girls need us. And God knows this fight wasn’t meant to be fought alone.
Our girls need older women, who have walked where they’ve walked, cried for the same reason they’ve cried, hurt for the same reasons they’ve hurt. We need older, wiser women to tell us it is all going to be okay. That we are enough. That this life has a purpose. That we have a purpose. That we can make a difference, not from how we look like the world says but from who we are like Jesus says.
So how can we do this?
Be there. Serve in the youth ministry at your church. Grab your daughter and her friends or your friends’ daughters and friends and talk about the crap that they see. Let them pour their hearts out to you. Let them be real with you. And speak truth every moment that you can. Use your place, where the Lord has placed you as a way to be a model for our girls, young and old.
I know it won’t be easy guys, believe me. Tween, teen and young twenty girls stink at being real, but we have to keep digging. We have to hit them where it hurts. We have to give them a safe place to pour their hearts out because if we don’t, they’ll find other avenues to do so.
We have all been there. We, each of us, have been 12, 13, 17. We know what it is like. So let’s step back in time a little bit and step up to the plate when see our girls hurting. When we see our girls trying to fit in and not squeezing into the impossible role the world has asked them to be.
Let’s step it up women. And show our girls Jesus. That’s it.
See ya soon,
Stephanie Lynn
gwenn | lynn 