How do we keep our daughter’s hearts and souls safe in this crazy world? There’s hope for parents, according to Connections Expert DeeDee Lake. What’s the next step for teenage girls?
We face so much destruction and depression today. How do we create the right conversations with our daughters? DeeDee’s passion is communication and connection, so she brings much wisdom about connecting with our teenage girls.
Traumatic Experiences to Process
Certainly, there’s a reason DeeDee has a heart for teen and preteen girls.
When she was just a preteen herself, DeeDee’s little community in Spain decided to have a haunted house for Halloween. As they prepared, one of the older boys rigged up a rope system to pretend he was hanging in a noose from the second floor.
At some point during the evening, he took his safety harness off. Heartbreakingly, no one knows if his death was by accident or on purpose.
“It was quite traumatic. I was the one who found him, me and his brother,” remembers DeeDee, “Back then, no one talked about it. They went back to the States afterwards and there was no counseling for any of the kids.”
The experience left her with a desire to connect with others in a deeply personal way.
The God Conversation
This year, COVID shifted everyone’s perspective about connecting through church. Will some find they like all the new electronic options? In contrast, others may treasure the privilege of gathering in person even more. Whatever else happens, one thing’s for sure. Like never before, the church can be reaching out to those in need of family support. (To get more free podcasts, blogs, and conversational adventures, click here! )
DeeDee’s story is a case in point. Raised in a military family, they traveled the globe. They seldom attended church unless they were stateside, visiting her grandparents.
“So I didn’t understand who God was. I just didn’t have a concept,” DeeDee explains. “It wasn’t that they were against God or I was against God or anything like that. It was just wasn’t part of the conversation.”
Certainly, she’s not alone in missing the conversation about God. (To start your own conversation with God, click here.)
“I think there are a lot of people who are not in the church and so they don’t understand who God is,” she adds, “or that they even need to be looking for him. So for me, I didn’t look for God.”
Church + Softball = LOVE
When she was sixteen, DeeDee’s family returned to settle in the states.
“My dad had retired from the Navy,” she recounts. “I found out the only way I could play softball—I was a big softball player, you know—was to go to this church that had a women’s league and they would let me play.”
The first year she played for them. That was all. Then, the next year they made a new rule. In order to play, you had to attend church. Bewildered, DeeDee began to show up on Sundays, trying to be as invisible as possible.
“I remember being slumped in the very back pew, just thinking, ‘Okay my time’s up. I’m ready to go,’ she laughs. “But over the weeks I started hearing what the pastor was talking about and that I needed to be saved. That for me was the big change. So, really God used softball to bring me into the family of Christ!”
If DeeDee’s story tells us one thing, it’s this. Each Sunday, there may be teenagers sitting next to us in the pew who don’t know the Lord. Naturally, we don’t want our own children overlooked. I don’t want any of my grandkids to sit in the pew each week without knowing God. (To get more free podcasts, blogs, and conversational adventures, click here! Once a week—just when you need it—we’ll send you something encouraging, thought-provoking and fun!)
The Next Step? Connect Early
As moms and grandmas, we all want to reach the children we love before they face difficult experiences. (If someone you love has been affected by sexual abuse, don’t miss Deb Butterfield’s interview here, or her book, Carried by Grace.)
“I learned early that you gotta get in there and connect because you don’t know how much time you have left with that person,” says DeeDee, who came to the Lord a few softball seasons later, at eighteen.
Even preteen kids benefit from understanding tough topics, like suicide, as a preemptive measure, according to DeeDee. To create a devotional time with your daughters or granddaughters, I recommend DeeDee’s book, Next Step. You’ve Accepted Jesus…Now What?
Or, use it as a lesson plan for Sunday school. Also, her book makes a terrific weekly Bible Study for your favorite teenagers in the living room of your home.
Mentoring Our Daughters
“Once I found out who the Lord was and accepted Him as my Savior, that’s when I really found out I am worthy.”
Sadly for DeeDee ten years passed before she learned more about how to live out her new faith. By the time she found mothers and sisters in the faith to mentor her, she was a young mommy.
“Bev Higley and Jane Thompson in Panama walked with me as I became a mom. I didn’t know how to be a Christian mom,” says DeeDee. “They just grew me up and really taught me my identity.” Identity is key to the future success of our daughters, according to DeeDee.
“Once you get your identity—we talk about that in the book, too—you really can’t be shaken,” she says. “The world is not going to shake you and give you a lie or a message that’s not true because you know you are a daughter of the King.” (To invite DeeDee to speak at your next event, click here.)
Getting Help Into the Hands of Teenagers
So, can we have the conversations we’re yearning for with our teenage daughters? How do we share sacred stories, leading to great companionship? Can we set our daughters up for success in all their future relationships? (For more from my daughter Ellen and me about how great conversations create intimacy, click here.)
It’s hard to find devotionals for teenage daughters. DeeDee wrote her book specifically to help moms connect with their teenage daughters. But it can also be a secret weapon for the girl who has to figure faith out all by herself without a spiritual mom.
“Girls could read (Next Step) by themselves if they needed to; if they didn’t have anybody else in their life to tell them about God,” says DeeDee tenderly. Personally, I love the way she explains all the church-y words as she writes.
Setting Them Up to Impact the World
Our kids are getting inundated. Families are really under attack. (For why your daughters are at risk and how to “porn-proof” your kids, click here.)
Of course, many churches strengthen their youth for success. One way to do so is talk about these hard topics with each other and with our kids. (For inspiring ways to connect with your toddlers through music, click here.)
The great thing about reaching our children when they’re young is the impact they can have so early in life. In the life of their friends—we’re talking about decades of influence.
DeeDee’s book is loaded with humor. Yet she intentionally takes on the hard topics, too, like suicide and death.
“It’s the highest rate it’s ever been, teen suicide. That concerns me,” she reports. “These children just need somebody to talk to. They just need to be given hope.”
Our Heavenly Jewels on Earth
“For me, what I learned from (her friend’s death) was always understand that people aren’t in your life for a long time,” she says. “Then, as they go from your life, knowing they are your jewels” will ease any pain.
Whether it’s a lifetime of mentoring others now or the new friends her career brings her way each day, DeeDee has this to say.
“My friends are heavenly jewels here on earth.” Amen, sister! That includes our daughters and granddaughters. All those we love!
Next Week—
How do you help build a girl’s self-worth? what are the best ways to help them choose their friends? How do we look for mentors—for ourselves and for our daughters?
DeeDee is fun alright. But she’s not messing around. This is a serious woman, someone I admire and respect very much. She comes back next week to help us have these hard conversations with our daughters and granddaughters.
Then, watch for my long-awaited interview with the amazing Sarah Van Hook. Yep, right here. More adventures to come! (For more tools to introduce taboo topics at your church, click here. Every Fireside Talk Radio podcast is designed to open up unthreatening conversations with those you love.)
The Well: The Art of Drawing Out Authentic Conversations
My first book, The Well: The Art of Drawing Out Authentic Conversations, is days away from release. It’s not too late to sign up for my Launch Team to help us spread the word about all our upcoming books. (Plus, you’ll get the news as soon as The Well is available, so sign up here.)
Also, you can join our Book Club to get special offers and inside stories. (Click here to find out who endorsed the book. I am so grateful!!)
❤️ ❤️ Thank YOU, sweet friend!!! ❤️ ❤️
Thank you for all you do to catapult great messages from heroic people, like DeeDee Lake, Rosie Makinney, Anna Krafve Pierce, and all our guests. Our culture is better because you push share! YOU are a crucial part of the team and we are grateful!! ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
May we pray together?
Dear good Father in heaven, We love You very much. We know You’re a tender Parent to us. Yet, we fail at parenting sometimes. We wish we could do more, say more, be more somehow. We fail to hear Your word, of course. How can we expect to connect with our daughters when we often fail to connect with You? We confess it now; we need Your help! Give us grace for the most challenging, most beautiful privilege known to mankind—to parent our children. Specifically, today we ask for insight into our daughters’ hearts. Please open our eyes to those around us who need a bit of encouragement. Make us strong warrior women in a culture desperately needing hope. Use us and use our kids to offer good truth in our messy world. Help us spread messages of hope and Your power! In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen.
We LOVE to hear from YOU!
Who is the most influential person in your life and why? When have you dropped a pearl of wisdom only to have it bounce back? What inspiring message changed your life?
Cathy Krafve, Columnist, Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, and Christian Writer, invites your stories, ideas, and questions at CathyKrafve.com. Truth with a Texas Twang.
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