I can’t shut up. Children are our future.

Imagine:

“Tears streaming down, her heart is broken.

Because her life is hurting, so am I.

He wears a frown, his dreams are troubled.

And because he stands alone, his dreams will die.

So humbly I come to you and say.

As I sound aloud the warfare of today

Here me I pray.

 

What about the children?

To ignore is so easy,

So many innocent children will choose the wrong the way,

So what about the children?

Remember when we children?

Were it not for those who loved us

And who cared enough to show us

Where would we be today?

Don’t just turn and walk away.

They need our love today…”  Yolanda Adams

Now imagine a child so vulnerable, confused and lonely that he or she intentionally submits a self-image along with the question, “Am I ugly?” to an appalling online universe, www.reddit.com/r/amiugly/ for evaluation.

What I know is the journey to that question and that website was a road filled with externally motivated misinformation, misperception, and meanness. Okay, so I’m just as angry as I was writing last week’s blog when I discovered this online nightmare.

However, let me pause to congratulate and celebrate all young people and the stakeholders in their lives who have surrounded them with hope, protection, direction, prayerful encouragement and love. The behaviors you are modeling are actually survival techniques for this and future generations!

But what about the children who don’t live in “villages” of positive encouragement, faith and love? How do they learn there is a power greater than all of their demons who specializes in great outcomes?  Who will help them develop healthy passions and emotions? Who will look in their eyes and respond to their unresolved feelings, fears and desires? Who will free them from their inner critic that insists their body is all wrong, their lips too big, that they are ugly? Who will teach them how to love themselves?

We will.

We have to become an expanded and sensitive adult “village” of caregivers to and for children everywhere. We need to show up in their lives! Our responsibility to them cannot be event driven; it must be constant. Our scripts must shout their worthiness, speak love, encouragement and faith after failure to try again. We have to understand that trouble in a teenager doesn’t always announce itself.

I know what I am asking is BIG.  Nevertheless, let me encourage you by saying some of my greatest treasures are the young women I mentor. They have become my mirror as to how I am living my life. They reflect what I am depositing into their generation. They are my report card.  They have given me so much trust and love. And yes, it is and was a process.  But they are our future. We owe them.

Please share and push this and last week’s blog out to anyone who is loving a young person from near or far. Remember were it not for those who loved us, who cared enough to show us …where would we be today?

Blessings.

    Until next time, remember,

• You are not alone.

• You are not your circumstances.

• You have everything within you to live a purpose-filled life.