Book Review: Scenarios For Girls

By Peter (Rediscovering the Church)

As our children get older, the decisions they need to make become harder and harder - and the consequences more lasting.

The most turbulent times of change seem to happen as kids enter Junior High and then again as they become High Schoolers.

Helping our teens navigate their way through the hormonal changes they're experiencing as well as increasing societal pressures from their peers can be difficult at best and, often, seems downright impossible.

Finding resources that can help us teach and mold our children is essential and today I'd like to tell you about a great resource that I have found for teen girls:

The Scenario's book series, written by Nicole O'Dell is a wonderful series for junior-high and high school girls which are great to read and yet will help the readers learn to make wise choices.

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Best Friends?

By Mallory

For a very, very long time, I was really worried that I didn’t have a best friend. I looked for friends from elementary school until college. I looked in my neighborhood, several churches, and school for a true friend. Don’t we all want friends who are going to stick with us all the time? How about a trustworthy, loyal friend? Someone you have something in common with and can have fun with? Friends that love you no matter what?

It’s HARD to find friends like this. I remember hearing a woman I respect share about this a long time ago on a youth group trip. That was when it hit me that this is something we struggle with all through our lives. This parent volunteer expressed feelings of loneliness and told us that she eventually realized Jesus is her one true friend.

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Keeping Up Appearances

By MH, Age 14

Being a teenage girl you go through life trying to fit in. You want to be apart of the "popular crowd" or apart of the "bad girls." The clothes we wear to try to fit in. The way we act to get people to like us. Have you ever wanted to fit in so badly that you would do anything? Well if you have I just want you to know that it is not a good way to live. I used to think that people wouldn't like me if I didn't wear this, if I didn't act like that.

A year ago that all changed. I realized that it doesn't matter what people think. I now don't care if people don't like me because I don't wear this or don't act like that. All that matters to me is how God is showing through me. God will always love us no matter what we wear or how we act. The "popular crowd" or "bad girls" only like us for who we pretend to be. For whom we are not. They only like us because we wear this or wear that.

God loves us unconditionally. Life is like trying on clothes. "That shirt makes me look fat, those clothes are too big, those shoes are last year, those pants are too dorky." We shouldn't go through life trying on clothes. Loving a shirt we just bought then throwing it away the next because someone "dorky" was wearing it. We should go through life showing people that God is in us. That He is yours and no one or anything can take that away. Not a "popular crowd" or the "bad girls." If you ever come across these struggles remember that God loves you because you are you and you are not trying to go through life trying on clothes.

Advice For Teens

By Roger

It's been 34 years since I was a teenager, but the memories and lessons I've learned as a teen are still fresh in my mind. You would be suprised to learn that the events you go through as a teen seem to come back to you as you get older and become a parent. Most of the time it's a situation that your parents helped you through only this time you are the parent giving the same sage advice to your own teen.

Here is a list of things that might make it easy for a teen to get through those "difficult years":

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Always Love Your Family

TB, Age 13

No matter where you’re family lives, or what mistakes they’ve made in their past, you can’t help but to love them for everything they truly are.

That is what I learned at my family reunion for my mom’s side of the family this past weekend. More than half the people there, I have never met in my life, but I was willing to accept anyone I would call family. One man had two teeth, and made so many mistakes in his past. To watch him be a better person, or at least trying to improve his life, with the help of his family and God, turned him into a better person. I admit, this wasn’t the top of my I want to do list, but It was nice to get to know people I may never see again. Though my cousins were complaining the whole time, I got to tell them that there is nothing that can ever replace your family. From 18 months old to 94 years old, love & respect everyone, because nothing can top the love, your family can give or receive.