Worth it

Yesterday morning started just like any other day... meeting with the house moms while the girls take care of the kids in the other room.  And yet a 16 year old spy crouched under the window to hear everything being said about her in our meeting instead of watching her baby.  This is supposed to be our time to get on board with each other, make sure we as the leadership are moving towards a common goal of pushing the girls more towards the Lord.  We share good things and bad things and try to get on the same page as to how to handle conflict.  We pray for them and talk about having grace and patience in the hard moments.  We don't share anything that isn't true.  And yet the 16 year old had a absolute meltdown knowing that she was being talked about.  Enough of a meltdown to share with me that she had been listening from under the window.

So... what do you do with an emotionally distraught 16 year old who has been stealing and lying and is hysterically upset because she was being talked about as someone who is not 100% trustworthy.  She will not admit to ever being wrong and has a downward spiral of saying she is leaving or that she doesn't want to live anymore.

Welcome to everyday life for us.  Working with emotionally fragile teenage girls as they try to be moms is something that has no handbook.  Many days I spend the day putting out fires as new unexpected emotional emergencies pop up all over the place.  It is hard and so hard to have patience and wisdom in the moment.

Yesterday was a day of just being present.  Just sitting on the floor playing with her son while she ranted and raved and couldn't be still for long enough to listen to anything.  But then we had a breakthrough.  She was still angry and upset and frustrated and the K from a year ago would have flown off the handle at the house mom the minute I walked out the door.  But we have been working hard on self-control and having to learn that at 16 instead of as a child.  And she calmly left her room, put on a movie, and started a sewing project instead of looking for a fight.  Progress?  I think so.

At lunch yesterday I got to hear C give her testimony to the person we were having lunch with and the short version goes something like this...
"I grew up in the church and I knew about God for my whole life.  I grew up thinking that God's love for me depended on how much I did for him or how much I loved him or how much faith I had.  The biggest thing I've learned in the last couple years is that I love God only because He loved me first.  He is the faithful one and nothing that I can ever do will change that."

Are the fights with the teenagers under the window worth it?  Yeah.  They really are.