Ordinary Days: ‘You have to cling to the truth’

I overheard the most amazing thing at Target the other day. I was in the toy section with my daughters, looking for birthday presents for a variety of friends, when I heard someone in the next aisle giving an earnest pep talk to someone on the phone. 

I heard this woman say, “You have to cling to the truth.” And she didn’t just toss the words out as a casual sound bite — she was fervent and sincere; she believed what she was saying. I leaned my head around the end of the aisle and saw a woman around my age pushing a full grocery cart, trying hard to keep her toddler from slipping down her hip, and somehow managing to point her friend on the other end of the phone toward Jesus. She kept that phone jammed to her ear and spouted encouragement: “You have to trust in Him and hold onto that hope that he put you here for a good reason…” 

As she rounded the corner toward the diapers, her voice faded, but a big part of me wanted to follow behind her and soak up her words. I needed that encouragement too because I’ve been feeling off lately. My daughters like to use the word wonky, which definitely applies sometimes, but these days I think it’s more weary. 

As I write this, it’s late April and the end of this school year is within sight. As usual, I’m full-steam ahead toward summer and all of its warmth, sunshine and lazy afternoons (remind me of this in August when we’re all melting) but I don’t think my weariness is coming from usual end-of-school fatigue. I think it’s a little deeper. 

I had a great conversation recently with a new friend who filled me in on some of the goings-on at the middle and high school — nothing terribly bad, probably just par for the course for tweens and teenagers, but I haven’t been able to get out of my head the idea that this huge tidal wave of worldliness (I don’t know what else to call it) is racing toward my tender daughters. I read books that talk about parenting in the age of social media, how to raise kind children and teaching girls to be brave, but deep down, I know that I can do all the reading and researching and hand-wringing and praying, and it’s still going to be out of my hands. 

It’s a heaviness that sometimes settles on my shoulders, and I can’t shake it. “Someone is going to tell her she can’t sit with them.” “Someone is going to make her feel like she’s not wanted.” “She’s going to realize her friends were invited and she wasn’t.” “She’s going to ask me why they were laughingat her.” 

And the scariest part for me — I fear I won’t know how to handle it. I won’t know the right words; I won’t have the right verses; my mind will be a blank slate instead of overflowing with whatever will soothe their hurts. Life will hurt them, I want to protect them, but I won’t always be able to. There is a lot about parenthood that is beautiful and thrilling and exquisite, but this is the heartbreaking, painful part. I can’t make the bad stuff go away. 

So I return to that stranger in Target, the one who was force-feeding truth to her friend on the phone. I have to cling to the truth — that the God of heaven and earth is in my girls, that he will shelter them in the shadow of his wings and that the same is true for me: He’s in me, He’ll shelter me and He offers me a hope to cling to when I have nothing else firm. He will speak through me to my girls, offering a peace and security that I, as a simple mom, cannot promise them. 

Lastly, you never know who will overhear you in Target. To that mystery woman charging down the aisle with a full cart and 30 pounds on your hip — thank you.

You can reach me by email me at Lauren@LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website, LaurenKDenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks, Twitter @LaurenKDenton, or on Facebook. My novels,”The Hideaway” and “Hurricane Season,” are out now and available wherever books are sold.