Just Dust

My church is offering what might be an unusual parenting class. There is a psychology professor in town who goes to our church, and we’ve got her presenting a Sunday School class that emphasizes adolescent brain development. I suspect that this class is unusual for two reasons. First, most parents stop paying attention to a child’s developmental stages when all those big milestones are navigated: teething, walking, potty training, language development. The stuff of photo albums. But somewhere along the line, the changes in our children become less dramatic and we’ve already tired our friends and family with stories about how little Johnny and Jane can count so high.

And then we eventually stop paying close attention. This is tragic because the brain development that occurs in our teens is dramatic, and yes, debilitating. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain responsible for self-control, judgment, and emotional regulation. Somehow in God’s wisdom he determined that this part of the brain would get a complete restructuring at this stage in life. This might explain why my sixteen-year-old can hit sulking, laughter, melancholy, frustration, and righteous indignation all during a single meal. The corpus callosum, or the gray matter, manages self-awareness and won’t finish developing in Alex until his early twenties. This sucks, as Alex’s high school, like most, is filled with hundreds of students who all think that everyone is watching them and that everyone else has their life put together. The temporal lobes provide a person with emotional maturity. Naturally, they are still developing after the age of sixteen.

All of this brain development, coupled with vats of hormones washing through the brain, and it’s no wonder that the emotional lives of teens are volcanic. Dr. Nixon explained that all this development creates a white noise that makes it hard for teens to think and function. If every teen didn’t go through it, you could label adolescence a mental disorder.

We’re giving Dr. Nixon a forum to discuss brain development during a time slot normally reserved for studies of the Bible because we want parents to empathize with what their children are going through as they attempt to discipline them and teach them godliness. What we’re finding is that parents are becoming more understanding of the civil war that’s taking place between their child’s ears. We suspect our parents will be more supportive with their kids as they navigate all the moral and emotional decisions that come with emerging into adulthood.

It occurred to me that this must be how God deals with all of humanity. We tend to view ourselves as strong and rationale, a least until life overwhelms us and we find ourselves taking on water. But the truth is that if everyone wasn’t going through it, we could label humanity a mental illness. When we are in a place of weakness, we remember that we are fragile and foolish. And we want our Heaven Father to know it.

I think this is what the Psalmist was getting at when he wrote these words:

“As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.

For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.

As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place acknowledges it no longer.

But the loving  bkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children”

Psalms 103:12-18

God, We strive to please you but in spite of our best intentions we can’t get out of our own way. We imagine that we are strong and moral, but we imagine this because we are frightened by our own brittleness. We want you to remember that you are the one who made us this way, but you already know this.  So this prayer is our way of reminding ourselves of who we are. Please help us to see you as who you are, a nurturing parent who accommodates our weakness. Amen.