The It's My Life Book (Paperback)

Chapter One

The younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. Luke 15:13

It used to be that if you looked up "perfect" in the dictionary, Lily's picture would be next to it. Seriously.

She made straight A's in school, and not just because she was bright. She had study habits that wouldn't quit. She always chose good friends, ones who thought like she did about the important stuff and were pretty close to perfect themselves. And she never gave her parents a minute's trouble.

Yeah, she was overenthusiastic about some things now and then-okay, often. But she never got detention. The teacher never had to call home. There was never anything but an "E" (which stands for "Excellent") in citizenship on her report card. Even at home, her mom and dad never had to ground her for breaking rules or having a smart mouth because that just didn't happen.

The thing is, Lily didn't even have to try that hard to be so perfect. It was just the way she was....

Until "the feeling" began. One day when the teacher told the class to open their language arts workbooks and do the exercises on page 34, Lily felt an itchiness inside her. She squirmed in her seat and fiddled with her pencil and chewed at her lower lip-but she could not get herself to open that workbook to page 34. These exercises are so stupid, she thought. I'm not doing them-they're lame.

After about thirty seconds, the feeling passed, and Lily opened the workbook and did the exercises-perfectly. She didn't think about the feeling again until a few days later when her mom said, "Baby, would you run upstairs and get my wallet for me? I think I left it on the dresser." Once more, Lily got itchy inside, where she couldn't scratch, and she wanted to scream, I'm not a baby! And how come you can't go get your own wallet!

Fortunately, those words didn't cross her lips, and she did get her mom's wallet for her. But she couldn't make herself smile about it, or barely even be pleasant when she handed it over.

"Anything wrong, Lil'?" her mom said.

"No!" Lily said in an edgier voice than she'd ever used before. Because even if she'd wanted to-and she didn't-Lily couldn't have told her mom what was up. She just knew she had the feeling, and it made her feel contrary and restless and definitely less than perfect.

From then on, she seemed to get the feeling at least once a day. Sometimes it was when she looked in the mirror and wished she could look a little less wholesome. Other times it was when she didn't think she could get through her chores without yelling, "What am I, a slave?" Occasionally, it even happened when she was having her quiet time with God. One day she threw her pen across the room for no reason she could think of.

"What's the matter with her?" Lily's younger brother Joe said one morning when Lily's mom sent her upstairs to take off the top with the spaghetti straps she'd borrowed from Ashley Adamson.

I'll tell you what's wrong! Lily wanted to say. But she couldn't-because she didn't know herself. All she knew was that more and more she was having the feeling, and it was kind of scary.

The feeling comes in a lot of different forms. Some girls have the urge to hit something. Others suddenly want to be sarcastic. Many simply don't want to do anything anybody has always expected them to do.

That feeling is the first stirring of rebellion, something that happens when a girl starts having the desire and even the beginnings of the ability to control her own life. The problem is, she's not completely ready to do that, so it gets confusing.

So where Lily had always been willing to do whatever the teacher told her to do, now she wanted to learn her way. Where she never used to question anything her parents asked her to do, now she'd like to have a choice, thank you very much. And where she was always happy to look wholesome and clean-cut, now she wants to look like somebody else just to show that she can!

Maybe you haven't had the feeling yet, and there's a slim chance you won't. Some people seem to breeze right through this part of growing up, either because their parents see it coming and begin to give freedoms and choices just at the right time or because the need to control their own lives doesn't come up until they're young adults, and by then, they can just take charge and go for it. If that's how it works out for you, say thank you to God. You are blessed!

It's more likely, though, that you've already had a hint of the feeling or that you will soon. It could even be that it's hit you so strong, you've dyed your hair blue or tried out some of those stick-on tattoos, just to see what people would say! Wherever you fall on the rebellion scale, it's good to understand what's going on with you. There are several things you're going to need to know:

The feeling is a normal part of passing from childhood to adulthood. This passage is full of pitfalls that, if you should tumble into them, could affect you for a long time (and give you even less control over your life). It can be dealt with in a healthy, godly, and even happy way.

This book is written to help you learn all three of those things. With a little knowledge and a lot of prayer, you can live through the feeling without messing up your life. In fact, you can even live a better life because of it.

So far, this rebellion thing may sound pretty creepy to you-people wanting to pierce their belly buttons, talk back to their parents, and bag their homework to go walk around the mall. But while the actions girls sometimes take when they get the feeling are definitely not a God Thing, the feeling itself does, in a way, come from our Creator.

HOW IS This a GOD THING?

When you were about seven months old, nobody had to tell you it was time to crawl. You just knew. And when you were around a year old, the same thing happened with walking. There are things you do as you're growing up that just come naturally, and one of those things is wanting to take control of your own life. Think about what it would be like if that didn't happen. People would never leave home, even when they were thirty, or forty, or fifty. In fact, there would be no homes to leave, because people would never take control enough to buy one. It's completely natural to say, "It's my life now and I have to live it."

The difficult thing to figure out is why God stirs those natural feelings up in us long before we're ready to act on them! It isn't a new thing, either. The Bible is full of rebellious children:

David's son Absalom was a holy terror (2 Samuel 15-18). Eli's sons were a pack of holy terrors (1 Samuel 2:12). Another one of David's sons, Adonijah, was also a rebel (1 Kings 1:5-27)-(What was up with David's kids, anyway?) The prodigal son in Jesus' parable may be the biggest rebel of them all (Luke 15:11-32).

Most of those rebels came to a bad end. Absalom was killed in a war he started. Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas (if you had a name like that, wouldn't you rebel?) died fighting over the ark, because they had no regard for the Lord. They put their father in a position where he had to choose between them and God. Adonijah, David's other kid, was struck down by David's successor, Solomon, because he was such a brat! The prodigal son was forgiven and welcomed back into the family fold, but only after he had spent all his money and had to wallow around with the pigs for a while.

So if rebelling is natural, how come rebels so often get the axe? God tells us in the Bible that the trick is to take charge of your life only when God says it's the right time. Then it isn't rebelling. It's growing up God's way.

Let's take Jesus, for example. When his parents took him to Jerusalem when he was about twelve years old (Luke 2:41-52), Jesus took control. While everybody else was heading back home, he stayed behind in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. As any mom would, Mary got all over him for scaring her and Joseph half out of their minds. His answer? "Why were you searching for me? ... Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"

Now, before you go running to your parents and tell them you're ready to do whatever God wills for you right now, no matter what they say, remember two things: First, you aren't Jesus! At age twelve-or eight or nine or ten or eleven or even probably fifteen-chances are you don't know yet what God wills for your whole life. If you have a relationship with the Lord through prayer and studying the Scriptures and looking for God everywhere, you'll begin to put together the pieces of the puzzle. Then you can start taking control in small ways. We'll talk about how in this chapter and in the rest of this book. But unlike Jesus, you aren't quite ready to make up your own travel agenda.

Second, when Jesus went back home to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, Luke tells us he was "obedient to them" (Luke 2:51). He didn't assume that since he had this one piece of what his heavenly Father wanted him to do figured out, he could just run around doing whatever else he wanted. He knew he wasn't finished growing up, and he let his earthly parents continue to guide him. There's no other record of Jesus rebelling. I like to think he dealt with "the feeling" in Jerusalem and knew what to do with it from then on.

So what does that mean for you when you get the urge to dye an orange streak in your hair or quit the piano lessons your parents want you to take?

1. Know that what you're feeling is normal, and you need to pay attention to find out what it's telling you. 2. Know that you can take control of small parts of your life now, but that you still have to be obedient to your parents. You can possibly work some things out with them and get them to understand how you feel, but in the end, they still have the last word. After all, even Jesus obeyed his mom and dad!