Victory Redefined

Yesterday, my 14-year-old daughter experienced what I think was the biggest victory of her life. Along the way, I grew up a little as a parent.

There is no shortage of parenting advice in this world. But I think the deepest wisdom is the learning that comes from the trenches, the kind that with the help of the Holy Spirit, you figure out all on your own. My wisdom from the trenches this week is this: A major part of parenting well is celebrating my kids' victories, even when they're not the kind of victories I was looking for.

I have written about this before. My husband and I assumed we would be cheering for our son on a football field or a wrestling mat or a basketball court. We expected his victories to come in the form of records broken and medals won and internal fortitude shown when his team was down. Remarkably, though, children grow up to choose their own interests and passions. And we parents have the opportunity to grow up and check our own dreams and expectations at the door, and embrace the child we have instead of the child we expected. So we've learned to see our son's victories in managing his time well, choosing a good attitude during a stressful week, responding sensitively to a young lady's feelings, and stepping outside his comfort zone to try new, hard things. I am a football coach's daughter, indoctrinated nearly at birth with the belief that sports teach and hone character like nothing else in life. But now I'm a parent of four kids, and I see that just living in the hard places of life and choosing to do the right thing teaches and hones character. Victories can be found everywhere.

Back to my daughter. What I can learn relatively easily with a son comes much harder with a daughter. I think it's because I have even greater expectations for her to be like me. But this daughter is not like me. Sometimes for fun, we sit and think real hard about ways we are alike. The one thing we've come up with so far is that we both like cherries.

If 14-year-old me was going to the biggest event of junior high, the 8th grade dinner dance, I would have spent months planning what to wear, primarily by researching what everyone else planned to wear. I would have had to have perfect hair and make-up. I would have required friends around me at every step--from choosing the clothes to doing my hair to showing up at the event. (There's no way I would have gotten out of my mother's car alone!) I would have only wanted to dance with the cutest boy there, and I might have spent the evening trying to dodge the uncool ones. If all these criteria were met, the evening would have been a victory.

Not one of these was met last night for my daughter. She got ready at home, quietly and alone, 20 minutes before the dance began. She surrendered her basketball shorts and t-shirt and wore the dress that I picked out for her online. The hair that she barely remembers to brush she allowed to be curled, which hasn't happened since 2005. She rode in my car alone with a smile on her face, telling herself that she was going to have a good time--no matter that she hates dressing up, doesn't know how to dance, and is terrifically uncomfortable in social situations. She would muster up her courage if some sweaty-palmed boy asked her to dance, and she would eek out some morsel of conversation, no matter how awkward. She held her head up high, stepped out into the rainy night, and had the time of her life.

She accomplished everything she hoped to do. She chose to dance with a crowd instead of dashing off to the bathroom or hiding out in the corner with a safe adult. She said yes to two sweaty-palmed boys, and yes, their palms were every bit as clammy on her waist as she feared they would be, but she pretended not to notice and was able to talk to them while they slow danced. She smiled and laughed and would not let herself be controlled by her deep social anxiety. She had fun, and she had victory. Not my kind of victory, but one that I cherished as much as any other I've ever known.

I was not the model 14-year-old, or 17-year-old. I had big hair and a bad attitude. I paid much more attention to what people thought of me than I did to God or truth or goodness or kindness. And yet I can still think that my experience was "right" or "normal." Thank you, Lord, for redefining "normal" for me and for deepening my understanding of what true victory looks like.