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A Parent's Prayer for Teens

by Janet Morris Grimes  
3/22/2010 / Prayers

Dear God,

I need to talk to you for a minute about these kids you gave me.

First of all, let me make this clear. I adore them. They amaze me, a million different times throughout each day.

They are clearly your creation and not my own. And for this, I am thankful. I could have never come up with something this wonderful, even if you had asked me to write out what I had in mind on paper before they were born.

But, I want you to know that I am scared. You have trusted me, as their parent, to teach them and protect them, raising them to be successful adults. The world also expects this of me. I wonder why, then, must the world work against me on every step?

As a little girl, my precious daughter well, actually, she is Your precious daughter happily skipped through life, treasuring each moment and believing anything was possible. But somewhere along the way to being a teenager, she lost her joy. Now, her days are filled with paralyzing self doubt and deceptive invitations down false paths of acceptance.

My adorable son, who once started each day by holding my face in his hands just to tell me he loved me, can no longer look me in the eye. He hides behind invisible walls built over time, convinced that I will never understand him. But I see through to his breaking heart, and mine breaks right along with his. It always has. It always will.

These are your children. And though they make mistakes, they are still perfect, just as you created them to be. How can I get them to see that? How can I protect them from the false expectations of their peers, who are all struggling to find their way just the same? How can I demonstrate to them that they were designed to stand out, rather than to fit in?

Sometimes, I watch them sleeping and this is my silent prayer for them:

Hold them in your arms. Always.

Reveal yourself to them often, proving that they are never alone.

Help them to be strong enough to make a difference; to change the lives of others rather than changing who they are to fit in.

Make their paths straight before them, just as you promised to do, and then provide the strength to follow.

The decisions they make today can alter the path of the rest of their lives. Help them to better understand this, and protect them when the time arrives to make those choices.

Show them that the rules we have in place are to protect them; not to prevent them from having fun, but rather to keep them from crossing lines into adulthood long before they are ready. Help them understand that once you cross those lines, there is no going back to being a kid.

Help them never to doubt you, especially when teachers and others cause them to question their beliefs. How can they ever find their true value if they believe they were an accident or morphed from monkeys of some sort? Their very existence proves that You are real, so please comfort them and give them your answers long before they need them.

I pray these same things for their future spouses and children. Protect their future and create it in a way that brings them all closer together and to you in the end.

And God, please keep whispering these things to them until they are ready to hear it from me face to face.

Because Lord, I adore my teens, and am so thankful you chose me to be their parent.

Give me what I need to do the job you asked of me, and hold me when Im scared, because whether they can see it or not, I never want to let either of you down.

In Jesus Name,

Amen

Janet Morris Grimes, the author The Parent's Guide to Uncluttering Your Home, released in 2011. She launched Abbandoned Ministries to lead others to seek God, as Abba, during abandonment. For more information, visit http://janetmorrisgrimes.com or http://abbandondoned.com.

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