Junior Highers

I spent a week this summer on a mission trip in hot sticky Tennessee with seven junior high girls (and one other brave female chaperone).  We just didn’t have any junior high boys that wanted to go along on the trip. So the church van was packed full of large duffel bags and estrogen,  and littered with strings from unfinished friendship bracelets. T here were long stretches of energetic singing --from camp songs all the way to Beyonce and Taylor Swift tunes.  There was a lot of passing and sharing of lotions and makeup, and lots of hair-braiding. When it was time to go to the bathroom, or dinner, or down the hall – a mini-herd always formed so no one ever had to be alone.

And this experience made me fall in love all over again with junior high girls.  Now, it’s very true that you can’t stereotype and lump all junior high girls together.  They are all delightfully different!  But with that said, I’m going to share a few things I re-discovered on this trip about junior-high girls.

The way junior high girls love on children – it is a wonderful thing to watch! Who would babysit our kids, assist in our church programs, and entertain the neighbors if it wasn’t for junior high girls?

One of these intelligent young woman uses the word “like” a lot when having conversation. During the week, I encouraged her to erase it from her vocabulary.  And then I thought, what’s the big deal? I know lots of adults who throw around the same annoying words over and over again. This is junior-high-girl-speak. Why fight it?

I love how chatty junior high girls can delve into heavy theological discussions, but still put their own spin on it. While discussing the complex and unfathomable forgiveness of God, one girl said, “So you mean if our sin hurts God, . . . . . and all these people down here are just sinning all over the place. . . . (pause) so then is God just a hot mess?”

And just when you think they might go down that road and become exclusive and catty and uppity, they reach out, love, and encourage each other instead.  Crying with each other. Praying for each other. Their hearts responding with all the sensitivity and emotion that make up a heart of a junior-high girl.

They are just special, special creations!!

I keep a picture of myself as a 6^th grader on my desk, or sometimes I carry it around in my Bible.  Why?  I do not know, because it is a bit embarrassing with its 1984 styles and baby-fat. It’s pre-puberty. My teeth are still un-braced with that large split between the front two.  My eyebrows are bushy and un-waxed.  But my eyes have this starry, sweet quality.  And innocence shines in my face. It’s a picture of a young girl uncompromised by the outside world. A young girl who is still who God created her to be. I guess I carry the picture around to remember what it was like to be that! I thank God for that time of life. Of little sin instead of bigger, consequence-heavy sin. A time of protection and learning and growing and laughing and singing and playing and friendship and goofyness. Of starry-eyed naivete.

Oh I wonder what God thinks when he looks down on junior-highers. I think they might be his favorite!

The last day of our trip, we went on a really short hike up to a creek full of big boulders and multiple mini- cascades. We scampered up the rock bridges, waded through the stream, balanced on fallen logs, looked for, and stuffed our pockets with, striped and colored and heart-shaped rocks.  I loved that morning of playing together-- –one more morning with sun and stream and God and each other--frozen in time before high school and boyfriends and broken hearts and jobs and college and careers.  Oh I pray for their lingering purity. Oh I pray for their growth and adventures ahead. What a blessing these young woman are to me!