Today was a fun day all the way around, but it also had a special moment I'll tell you about in a minute. To begin with, today was L's mock exam for her Grade IV Cecchetti exam next week. She has such a wonderful teacher, willing to take the time to run the kids through a mock exam just to be sure they're completely prepared for the real thing.
Then my sister, P, treated me to a birthday lunch. My birthday is three months past, and we're only just now getting around to it. I had my all-time favorite, lasagna with a gooey, sinful dessert, and I don't think I'll be hungry again for three days!
When I got home from that, L was already searching out chick-flicks to make the most of our last night home alone without the boys. We found two to watch, The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock, and Life as We Know It, with Kathrine Heigl, and drove to the Blockbuster in the neighboring city to get them. (Our Blockbuster is going out of business!) They were both pretty good, but I don't know that I'd recommend either of them to our most conscientious Christian friends.
L's interest in romantic movies is blossoming concurrently with her interest in boys, not surprisingly, and both are becoming more frequent topics of discussion among her friends. My daughter, B, took a different, more unique, path through her adolescence, always marched to the beat of a different drum, and this was just never an issue; L is more typical. She's silly, and giggly, and from all outward appearances, completely shallow. She's all about how she looks, her hair, her make-up, her clothes, her style. She's also all about celebrity crushes, and more recently, who of her friends likes whom, and most recently, which guy in their small circle is madly in love with her, but too bad, he's ugly. She's a caricature of the American teenage girl! At least she appears to be.
So, as much as I was enjoying my time with her watching these movies, I was also concerned that the attitudes portrayed in these movies about sex and relationships were actually molding her world view, overwriting the values that T and I had taught and exemplified for her.
So when we got up to make popcorn between the movies I took that opportunity to talk about this with her. I knew it would not be easy and I would have to tread lightly. She is committed to her shallow facade and doesn't like her cover blown! (Although truthfully, at that point, I was not completely sure how much of the shallow giddiness was facade and how much was real.) But I did broach the topic. I told her that she had a good ten years of guys falling "madly in love" with her just because she was pretty and dressed the part, and that we as women are responders. It's hard not to respond to attention like that, and that she needs to be careful (prayerful) before she gives her heart away. I repeated in as few words as possible, because L doesn't respond well to too many words ever, but especially when it comes to matters of the heart, that God created that type of relationship between a guy and a girl for marriage, and if marriage is not even in the foreseeable future, then she needs to be careful, it is only wise to not become entangled in an affair of the heart with a desirable guy. In other words, that entire American dating scene is sick. Amazingly, she was able to reassure me that, yes, she did believe that God had a man chosen for her, and until she felt sure the guy she was interested in was the guy God had for her to marry, she fully intends to keep her heart under raps. In other words, she's not as shallow as she'd have us believe! =)
Thankfully, she revealed that at least a couple of her best girlfriends also have the same perspective, and they have discussed it among themselves. At the same time, she has one friend who is headed for trouble, T and I both see it. Poor thing, a real sweetie and a preacher's kid. I love her, but I just don't want her dragging my L down the path she's headed. Her parents seem slightly clueless about some important things.
So, that conversation with L was my happy moment of the day!
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