Lauren Denton
I’m almost embarrassed to admit that at one point in my life — and for quite a long time — I thought Jesus would return before I had to figure out the middle school years. Not my middle school years, but my kids’.
Even when my girls were babies, I was already thinking about middle school because, honestly, parents are fed so many scary stories of how harrowing those years can be. And as you do when you first have children (or was it just me?), you inhale all the stories people tell you and start to build your armor for the difficulties you imagine will come stampeding toward you.
As Kate and Sela grew up, Matt and I learned right alongside them. My kids, Sela especially, are always amazed to hear that we really had no idea how to be parents until we became them. We’ve just been winging it all these years, praying a whole lot, messing up and trying to fix it, apologizing and starting over, and loving as well as we can.
We figured our way through the middle-of-the-night feedings, potty training, trips to the ER with croup and head injuries, the start of preschool and elementary school, first airplane trips and Covid, but parenting a middle schooler felt too big, too monumental and clearly something that Jesus didn’t intend for me to have to figure out.
I remember a conversation several years ago with a friend whose kids were a few years ahead of mine. She was talking about some issue her oldest was facing in seventh or eighth grade, and I confidently said, “I’m just praying Jesus comes back before we get to middle school.” I thought she’d empathize with me, or at least give me a “who knows, maybe he will” shrug.
Instead she laughed. “Good luck with that,” she said. It wasn’t a knock on Jesus; it was a knock on my naivete, and it knocked the wind out of me a little. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand how prayer worked; I knew that just because you pray for something doesn’t mean you get it. But still, in my heart of hearts, I thought — and yes, prayed — that middle school would be a mountain I wouldn’t have to climb.
Then Kate graduated from Edgewood, and there was no way around the mountain. But as we went through orientation, then the start of classes, as we helped her figure out new ways of studying, new interests to explore and new friendships and old, I realized the mountain wasn’t as scary as I’d thought it would be. It was different, for sure, but it wasn’t as threatening once I was close enough to touch it.
There were bumps and twists, but also lots of growth and discovery, laughs and creativity. There were tears and late nights, as well as new joys and triumphs. And our middle schooler? She was — and is — awesome.
Now here we are staring at even more mountains — the start of high school for
Kate and the start of middle school for Sela — but I’m no longer praying I can somehow skirt the mountains. Not because I’ve figured everything out or no longer worry, but because I’ve discovered you can face the impossible and somehow get through it. And I’m not just talking about hurdles at school.
In the interest of full disclosure, there were other things I thought would never happen. When I was in high school, the idea of turning 40 seemed so remote, so impossible, I genuinely never thought it would happen. Jesus would surely return first and I’d never experience “old age.” I also never thought my parents would die. The idea of losing them was so incomprehensible, I thought there was no way it would happen. The thought of all of us reaching heaven together was much easier to swallow. Over the last four years, I’ve settled into my 40s, had one child enter middle school and the second almost there and lost a parent.
Impossible, far-fetched, incomprehensible things happen, yet life goes on. We keep stepping up the side of each new mountain one foot at a time. Sometimes kicking, occasionally screaming (if only in our own heads), but since the mountains don’t budge, there’s no choice but to scale them.
Kate didn’t talk much about how she felt about middle school as it was approaching, and now that Sela is just a couple months away from starting her own experience, she doesn’t talk about it much either. It may be that they deal with their own feelings of looming mountains in their own, internal ways. I do know that once Christmas
passed and we were on the downward slope toward the end of this past school year,
Kate repeatedly commented on how fast this year — and middle school in general — seemed to go. And I bet Sela will feel the same way.
Their own mountains may loom large, but I pray that as they take their first step, then another, then another, they’ll discover that they have more grit and strength than they thought. And maybe I’ll learn the same thing.
When I’m not writing about my family and our ordinary life, I write novels, go to the grocery store, and vacuum dog hair. You can find my books in stores, online, and locally at Little Professor Bookshop. You can reach me by email at Lauren@LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks or Facebook ~LaurenKDentonAuthor.
