Sitting Outside the Door

We currently have two teenagers in the house. In a mere 14 months we will have three of these creatures and I absolutely love it. I’m also petrified, but I can get over that.

Yesterday morning I sat in my living room and texted with another mom of teenagers about the crazy hard of it all. We agreed that in these years of parenting teens resolve has had to be readjusted and worn in new ways. How knowing them is so important, but knowing the Holy Spirit is crucial. How it feels like parenting a toddler all over again as we desire to rescue them from the decisions that could hurt them, but knowing that holding back and allowing them to stumble a little is so much better for them.

It was all so different and yet the same as the anxiety I felt 15 years ago sitting in his room by his crib, patting his back while he cried for me to rescue him from the perils of a full night’s sleep. I was anxious that maybe there really was something wrong, anxious that somehow I was scarring his little personality, anxious that maybe I was the one mom who shouldn’t be strong and make him sleep. Maybe I should let him wake me up in the middle of the night for the rest of his life, would that be so terrible? I wanted to be strong though, and so I stayed where I was, and his crying didn’t last long.

Only this time I was sitting outside his door trying not to wake him up. He has a job. His first job. I knew he was supposed to be there at 8:30 and it was well past 7:00. I knew that it takes him almost an hour to shower, eat, and get his bag packed. I knew that we needed at least 40 minutes to make the drive. I knew that we were going to be late and I was anxious. Anxious he would get into trouble, anxious that the person he was working for would be disappointed, anxious that the person whose schedule he’d agreed to work a shift for would get into trouble with him. Anxious that we would all suffer consequences.

I had told him the first morning though, the morning I did wake him up, that it was the last time. I will not be his alarm clock. I will not be his back-up when it came to getting up and getting ready, and if he didn’t come down for breakfast or find his way to the car in time, I would not hold my schedule off to get him where he needed to be. If I had an appointment, he would have to call someone for a ride, or wait until I got back. He had nodded, he wants to be independent.

Yet here we were, he was sleeping, I was being tested. Did you mean what you said about waking him up? Did you mean what you said about letting him suffer the consequences of his decisions? Are you willing to let him lose his job because you said you wouldn’t wake him up? I didn’t think he would actually lose his job, but it felt like he could in the moment. It felt really, really conflicting.

Another mom, another mom with teenagers, another mom with resolve, she helped. We laughed and we talked about strength and honesty and kids. We talked about God’s plan, and His leading in us. She came from a life with few boundaries and I came from an idyllic Christian family. She had no real example to go on, and I had a classic godly mother. But our backgrounds didn’t matter a whit yesterday morning as we sat in our respective homes with our little smartphones transferring our encouragements back and forth. We were just mom’s with sleeping teenagers, and the Holy Spirit was our common and perfect foundation.

And as we built each other up in truth, the time passed and I heard a shower going, and soon Owen came down and he was unfazed by the time and I questioned him and he said, “I don’t have to be there until 9:30.” And all my blaze of worry was for nothing. But it wasn’t for nothing. My morning fire burned away any question, in my mind and in Owen’s, of my lack of resolve. And it fueled my convictions about my relationship with God and how that is my greatest asset as a parent. And it lit up a good conversation with a friend, which is never, ever, a bad thing for a mom of a teenager.

Those few nights hearing him in the night and going to him but not rescuing him from his crib. Those nights built the resolve I need for today, and they taught me that parenting builds me as much as it builds my child, and I’ll take it.