am i good enough
Mar 23 2013

When Will I Be Good Enough

I‘m on the highway, driving to meet Katie Kettenacker for the first time, and I’m wondering about a lot of things. Things like whether or not she’s easy to talk to, what she thinks of college life, where she hopes to be in five years.  And how much she weighs.  That might sound shallow, but it’s the reason I’m here: Katie is a recovering anorexic.

I’m thinking about these things when Katie and I finally meet in her dorm lounge. She’s slim and beautiful. She extends her hand to me, confident and poised. It’s hard for me to believe she ever struggled with her self-image. After introducing ourselves, we head to a nearby restaurant to grab some lunch and talk. I tell Katie I think it’s slightly ironic that we’re going to eat while we talk about her eating disorder. She laughs, and I’m incredibly relieved. Her easy-going personality means I won’t have to tiptoe through all my questions about what happened to her.

Our waitress comes by and Katie orders her food without hesitation. When our salads and Diet Cokes arrive, we eat for a few minutes before Katie starts telling me her story.

“I was 5 feet 8 inches and weighed 135 pounds when I started high school,” she says. “I was content with my appearance. But that didn’t keep me from spending a lot of time and energy on how I looked. I wanted to project the image of a perfect person. I was a perfectionist about other things, too—gymnastics, varsity volleyball and softball, band, church, my grades, you name it. I was intense about these things, and I usually excelled at them. I was captain of my sports teams, first chair in band, a member of a select singing group, heavily involved with my youth group, and got straight A’s.” As she says this, Katie doesn’t sound like she’s bragging. She sounds honest.

The above story is all to typical of what we hear from a lot of young teens in today’s world.  With so much emphasis being placed on them by Hollywood and other humiliating sources, there seem is a wrong signal that is being sent to them saying to them that in order to accepted socially you have to meet certain criteria and one of the hardest looked at is your outward appearance.  Now we have allowed ourselves to create a generation of young people who will be blessed to even see their adulthood if they live through getting to it.

Thin is in, or so the story goes according to Hollywood.

Whatever happened to not judging a book by its cover but rather taking time to read what was on the inside of the cover.  Oh pardon me…. I failed to realize that nobody takes time to read anymore other than the content they fill in their heads with media that fills their heads with lies, filth and corruption.  Let’s not forget, also, that many teens in today’s world are left to raise themselves either because they live in a one parent home or very possible they have parents who may not give a hoot about them and their eternal well-being.  So off to the electronics they race to fill their life with the void that their parents failed to provide for their emotional stability and needs.

When did keeping up with your so-called friend’s on Facebook for parents become so much more important than taking to take the time to find out exactly what was going in your child’s life.  However, this too could play a part in why the suicide rate amongst teens is the highest it has been in years.  Me having younger children as well to include a couple of teenagers still roaming around at home understand the junk that is embedded into their minds via social networking sites as well as the relentless attacks they experience from many of their peers.

Listening to some of the conversations that pass across our dinner table at night brings this even closer to home.  Most generally the bulk of the conversations evolves around boys or someone else thinking that someone else it out to take their boyfriend.  First let me say that this is not by any means an attack on my daughter as hopefully she has learned myself and her mother that there are far more important things to be worried about at this point in time in your life such as thinking about what you are going to do with the rest of your life, other than figure out how you are going to live your life according to others standard’s.

Why would a 14-year-old even be worried about what they think is love when most of these girls could not give you more than a sentence or two of why it is they love themselves.  That being said, exactly how in the world do they think they even begin to know what love is and how to show it appropriately to someone else.  Look, I do not want to me misunderstood, I was a teen once myself.  Granted, this may have been a while ago possibly a million years if you ask my kids, however, the game hasn’t changed any only the names.  Book ’em Dano!

Please keep in mind that I have 7 children 5 which happen to be female.  I have heard more drama that I almost feel compelled to become a male version of Anne Landers.

Sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, alcoholism any many more diversion are so readily available to our teens today and without a parents deep involvement in their children’s lives it is so very easy for them to become ensnared and a victim of these tragedies.  I can’t begin to tell you the countless amounts of horror stories that have been told to me personally by families who thought they were good people and that they did not understand how their child could be driven into a life of drugs, sexual promiscuity or even worse suicide.

There is an easy answer for this, it’s called the absence of Jesus in your home and a family that will not waver from its fundamental foundations.  Look, I will be the first to admit that we have our fair share of problems  but at the end of the day we take time to find out what is going on in each of our children’s lives at the end of the day.  That’s not to say we necessarily have the answers immediately to fix them but at least we have the ability to provide them with different solutions to look at potential fixes.  Obviously, this does require some effort on their part to both be willing to listen as well as take action upon them.  I have to admit that at times this is not easily accepted.  You have to make it a point to make it the option.

Now for you teens who may think that your parents are nags and a whole bunch of other choice coined phrases that we have heard, let me share this with you.  Take time to truly think this through….

Which is the better scenario for you?  Having a parent or parents who nag and are truly concerned about your well-being or not having one who gives a rip about what happens to you.  You may be thinking that surely there are no teens who have parents that don’t care about them.  You would be sadly mistaken by the number of cases we have dealt with that we have had to intervene with teens who were in that very scenario.

The bottom line young people is that without Jesus at the very epicenter of your life everyone else with the exception of your parents truly don’t matter.  Look how many of you can relate to the fact that your core of friends changes as often as many of you change your underwear.  I know that is a strange comparison, however, I am here to tell you that is just about the frequency rate.  Sadly enough, after you have graduated from High School most of the girls that you had spats with in Junior High or even High School will probably not remember your name 5 years after you graduate.  And to think you wasted all of that time and energy caring about what they thought of you rather than worrying about caring about your personal relationship with Jesus who is the only one who is going to get you into heaven.

I know that is a heavy thought but it is the only true thought that should matter to you.  Not even your parents are first!  It is Jesus first then down hill from there.  Having been through the entire drug and alcohol scene myself during my late teen years and into my early adulthood before I came to my senses and at an extreme price, I am here to tell you that the only thing that matters and should matter is Jesus.  Nobody else is going to get you into Heaven even if you are a good person who claims to have done nothing wrong.  Like the Bible says that Jesus exclaimed that you will be spewed from his mouth because he did not know you if you did not have a personal relationship with him.

Let me add this as well…..

Having a personal relationship with Jesus does not mean you go the church to attend your local youth group to pray over others only to go to school the next day to talk trash about the same person you were praying over.  You may think you have everyone fooled and indeed you may very well have.  However, at the end of the day you can count on the fact that Jesus knows the truth regardless of what kind of picture you choose to paint.  You don’t go to church or attend your local youth group to please your parents, you don’t go to find a new boyfriend or girlfriend, you don’t go to make it a personal gossip section about this person or the next you go to please Jesus.  That is the final answer!

I can’t tell you how ill it makes me feel when we go to church and know that there a couple of girls that continue to talk smack about my daughter as they are their acting as if they were the best Christians to hit the floor running and putting on a show for those they think need to see it.  That’s not to say that my daughter may not cause some of this herself.  What does bother me the most is the fact that they can even bother to step into church knowing full good and well what they are thinking rather than focusing on why it is that they should truly be there.

Young people I am here to tell you we are close to the end and if I can offer you only piece of advice that would be forget everyone else and focus only on Jesus.  It won’t be long that the day will be here that you’ll have to make a decision between loosing your life or loving him.  How important is going to heaven for you?  It would be a good time to get real now, cause there is not going to be time in the end to try to take back everything you shouldn’t have done.  The decision is yours, what will it be?

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