What I Know Now Thursdays: How to Decode a Teenage Girl

What I know today is that fathers and teenage daughters have one of the hardest relationships to muster through.

I remember my own stepmother "mediating" between my father and I. I should call that "teenage interpretation" in which she decoded what I was trying to say and translated it into language my father could understand.

When I was a teen, my father didn't understand anything.

I have a 14-year-old stepdaughter and, trust me, she is very much a teenager. Add to that a history that colors her life all kinds of bleak and you get a pretty pouty and miserable girl.

How is a father supposed to understand such a creature?

How is a father supposed to allow his wife to help translate this strange teenage-speak?

And more than that, how is the stepmother...

who sees both the father's world

and the stepdaughter's world

translate to each other?

Flowers wither without water. Flowers can be surrounded by ever-encroaching ugly weeds.
We need to get the weeds out and water the poor thing.

Water it with love.

What I know now is that while it is important for parents to love their ailing teenagers

and I know it is especially important that those girls know and feel their father's love (even amidst their angsty get-away-from-me ways)

and it is important for a teenage girl who needs a mama role model to feel that kind of love

even though I know all that

what I know now is that it is, ultimately, the Father's love

Our Heavenly Father's unfailing love

that can heal a torn heart.

What I know now is that I cannot be a savior between the man and the girl I love. I cannot be the almighty translator and decoder.

We have a Savior. We have a Healer. We have a redeemer.

So who am I in this family? I'm not the savior, healer, redeemer. But I want so badly to show how I love, how I care, and how I can help. In some way.

What I don't know now is how to strike that balance.

Maybe that will be what I answer in a future "What I Know Now Thursday."

linking up with Sarah Mae  even though she is taking a month-long blogging break to focus on family which I highly applaud. In the meantime, do read her past blog entries. I enjoy her blog very much and find so much heartfelt wisdom there.