Generosity for Teenagers

Lydia of Thyatira is known for being the first European convert to Christianity. Unusual for the time, she is believed to be the head of both a household and a business, and thus influential in her town. 

In Acts, Luke writes that she listened eagerly to Paul. I believe nothing more strongly than attention is the holiest gift you can give, and when Lydia gave her attention to Paul amidst her daily prayers by the river, Luke writes ‘the Lord opened her heart.’ And at that, after her family had been baptized, she invited Paul and his travel party to stay in her home. Indefinitely. 

So now let’s talk about teenagers. 

I want to take a minute and talk about having open hearts for our children, and especially our teenagers. Behavior is the key to understanding what’s in our heads and in our hearts. When our littles ask a lot of questions or misbehave, they are signaling any number of things. We are pretty good at deciphering most of it. It’s cute when they ask questions full of wonder and curiosity. And when they throw a tantrum? ‘Oh, sweet baby’s tired.’

But teenagers… How do we open our hearts to our teenagers? They are hormonal. Their moods swing this way and that. Their undeveloped prefrontal cortexes send signals that overwrite all that hard work we did to wire them toward safety and compliance. Some lie, cheat, and steal. And we often feel they should know better because after all, ‘I’ve told you a thousand times!’

We task them with required attention and the grades to show for it in school, extra-curricular activities that take more time than we could ever dream of devoting to anything—household chores, learning to drive, part-time jobs, family obligations, and those life-altering decisions like college or vocational decisions. All this while their physical bodies are growing and their emotional selves are dying to fit into some ever-changing and hyper-public norm. 

Lydia saw that Paul and his cohort needed a place to stay. And they did. Then they left because the need was no longer there. Some came back later when the need arose again. What if we offered our teenagers the gift of generous hospitality by asking, ‘What do you need right now?’, and then, we sit and listen. What if we give them our attention while they work out what exactly their growing selves need in that moment? And then we trust that when they’re ready to move on, they will. An extra day of rest will likely not ‘make them lazy.’

For every need we can imagine, there is a social expectation to push back.

• I took on too much and need to drop this. – But commitment.
• I didn’t turn in assignments and now need more time. – Plan better.
• I’m exhausted and don’t want to go to Granny’s birthday. – Family first.
• I forgot to put the trash out. – Everybody helps in this house. 

So how do we meet them halfway? How do we prepare our teenagers for the mental load of what it means to be human in 2024? This is courageous hospitality of the heart. It goes against much of what society says is expected and necessary for our children to ‘succeed.’

How can we gift our teenagers the tools we use as adults?

Spoiler: You can’t just tell a teenager to do something. More often than not, just like when they’re four-years-old, we need to do it with them first. Like tying a shoe. Did your kids learn that bunny rabbit going around the tree thing on the first try? Mine neither. 

We look at our calendars at the beginning of the week. Do they use a planner or does your family have a weekly calendar with the plans for the week? Is it located where our kids can reference it? Do we remind them to reference it rather than telling them everything in the moment?

We must communicate. ‘Boss, I have a dentist appointment and will be out of the office for staff meeting on Thursday. What’s the best way to get the information I miss?’ Tell them what’s helpful for you to hear when they ask for something. How should they communicate with teachers about an absence?

We set alarms on our phones and put things in our calendars. I can’t stress this enough. Especially for our pre-teens. We, as adults, offload a lot of our mental tasks to our devices. If our pre-teens don’t have them yet, and if our teenagers don’t know how to utilize these tools, we can’t expect them to keep up with all that we cannot either. 

And lastly, and here’s the hardest part, we’re the grown-ups. We are the parents and the ones in charge and the models for what we want to see in our children. We are the ones who have to say ‘No,’ ‘Go to bed,’ ‘Leave your phone,’ ‘Not this season,’ ‘We’re going to go anyway, but we can rest at this other time,’ and all the other hard things and battles that are exhausting, especially after everyone involved had a long day. 

If certain things are hard for us as parents, it’s got to be a challenge for our children, too. What do we need to be successful? How can we model those things for our teenagers while also offering them grace? We are certainly are grateful for grace when we need it, too.

Like us as parents, Lydia orchestrated a whole circus of household, professional, and local matters. She recognized the need for radical and courageous hospitality in the face of new information. What new information do our teenagers communicate each day to which we can listen and respond with open hearts, modeling the empathy we hope they can offer others in school, at practice and rehearsal, and at home with siblings and parents?