So Why Exactly Did I Do That?

I don't know why I feel the need to use cats
to express my thoughts in these blogs.
I just do.
Besides, they are super cute, aren't they?

This is going to be an interesting post. Not really interesting in that "Wow! That's so amazingly cool!" sort of way, but interesting in that I am really stressing out about how to say what I want to say in it. I have all of these thoughts running through my head that are begging to be let free, but so many of them are intertwined with conversations that I have had with Laney that are not really the type of thing that I feel free to share with the blogging world. I will need to thread the needle here as I write, accurately expressing my thoughts without speaking out of turn as I discuss Laney's life and feelings. So, like I say, it'll be an interesting post. Just bear with me, and for Laney's sake, try not to make any assumptions about situations or experiences that I discuss. There may or may not be a story here. All I know is that whatever story there is is not mine to tell. I'm just going to stick to talking about a thought that struck me this week in my ongoing saga: How to Be a Parent Without Ruining My Children's Lives. Episode #2587. (SPOILER ALERT: We have absolutely NO idea what we are doing!)

Those of you who are my loyal blog followers -- do I even have loyal blog followers? -- might remember a post I made back in March entitled "Pardon Me While I Gush for a Moment." I know you've got all of my posts memorized, right? Well, if you want to refresh your memory you can read it HERE, or you can find it on the right side of this blog toward the bottom of the popular posts section. Or if you want the quick summary: In this somewhat rambling post I talked about Herman's and my philosophy when it comes to how our children date. I talked about Laney and the super good choices that she is making in her life, and then I bemoaned the fact that there did not seem to be any young men in the world who verbally recognized the young women for the good choices that they were making. Then I told of a young man (who remained nameless during the post) who had put a note on Laney's facebook wall explaining that he had read her blog and her mormon.org profile. He thanked her for them and the good example she was to him. I went on to gush about how super grateful I was to that young man for those kind words he left for Laney. And I was. And I still am. I know I cannot adequately explain just how grateful I am for his words. So I won't even try to explain. I just am.

Well, today I want to give that young man a name. I think I'll call him George. No. I'll give you his real name. Just don't go stalk him or anything after this post. He's a good boy. I need to tell a bit about him so that I can explain the parenting epiphany I had this week in a way that makes some sense. The first time I heard about Heath Tenney was after Laney returned home from EFY 2011. I don't think that Laney even remembers this conversation, but I haven't forgotten. She was showing me all of the many pictures she took of her friends during the week, and eventually she came to this picture:

Now it isn't every day that I see a picture of Laney and some guy licking walls together. So that picture stood out a bit from the rest. I asked who this guy was, and Laney gave a highly complimentary explanation of who he was. After her remarks I said that he sounded super awesome, and Laney said to me, "He really is Mom, but Heath is that guy that ALL the girls love. He'd never look at me twice." Now, as she said this she wasn't moping or sad or anything like that. She was just stating what she felt was an obvious fact about Heath. But those words struck me hard. Why would she say such a thing? Why wouldn't somebody like Heath ever look at Laney twice? I stopped her and asked her why she thought that. She said, "Well, you know. All the other girls are so cute, and so fun. I don't know. It just seems like he would be more likely to notice them." I had to nip those thoughts in the bud. I explained my thoughts which went along the lines of: Do you know why there are young men out there who ALL the girls love? It's because they are NICE guys who treat everyone with kindness and respect, have stellar testimonies, and are great examples to everyone around them. Of course all the girls would like them! Do you know who those guys choose to focus on when they are in the mood to focus on specific girls? NICE girls who treat everyone with kindness and respect, have stellar testimonies, and are great examples to everyone around them! And that is Laney, the epitome of uber-kindness and enthusiastic testimony. So I finished the conversation by saying, "You know, Laney. You are right. It is probably true that this Heath Tenney will never look at you twice. BUT, one day, someday, there will be some "Heath Tenney" out there who WILL look at you twice. Because you are amazing. And somebody will see that. It just probably won't be for a few years." I told her that she had one job, and that was to be everything that she truly is, no more or no less. Be Laney, and someday someone would appreciate that. (And, just to be clear, I didn't just say that Laney was amazing because it is written in my parenting contract that I have to say that my kids are amazing. I really do believe that she is amazing!) I'm sure that I finished that conversation thinking, "Wow! What a great Mom Moment!"  But I'm sure Laney just tossed it into her brain file that holds all of her "Mom-making-a-bigger-deal-of-a-comment-than-she-needed-to" statements.

So, that was a long-winded explanation of a relatively short conversation that Laney and I had over a year ago. I remembered that conversation, not because of Heath particularly, but because of Laney's belief that the "superstars" were out of her reach. I hate to use the word superstar here, but I don't know any better way to label these young men who are top-notch members of the Church. So it'll have to do for now.

To make a long explanatory story shorter, Heath eventually sent her the sweet facebook note that I mentioned earlier. The two of them ended up going to EFY again together in Bloomington, Indiana, and they were in the same group again. They struck up a close friendship during the week. I'll let Laney do the explaining about that. She wrote about it in her blog HERE. On Friday of that week Laney called Herman to ask if it was okay if she came back to Indiana in two weeks for a group date, and Herman agreed. How could he not? We'd already made a huge deal about how we were totally willing to drive Laney anywhere to date good, righteous young men. It just happens that this was the first time Laney actually made the plans. Usually it was something Herman cooked up, and Laney patiently agreed. So we really needed to support her in this.

Well, last weekend was that big shebang. Laney and I left Waynesville at 4 am on Saturday morning, and Laney met Heath around 10:30. Then I went on a long adventure through the outskirts of Indianapolis, coming close to throwing Sally, our usually dependable, but surprisingly awful Indy direction giver GPS, out the window. And Laney went out and had an awesome time with Heath. That's the short story of the weekend. I think I'll keep it at that for this post.  Like I say, I'm threading the needle here.

But that story is not exactly what I wanted to write about in this post. I want to explain why I suddenly discovered that coming to Indianapolis this weekend was so important. Right before we left I was talking to my brother, and I told him that I was going to drive Laney this weekend. He said, "Let me get this straight. You are going to drive Laney all the way to Indianapolis ... for a DATE?" Yeah, I guess when you phrase it that way it does sound a touch over the top. But it is what it is. I don't feel like it was too much to do. But why exactly was I willing to drive Laney all the way to Indianapolis for a date? Good question. I thought I knew the answer, but this weekend I think that I realized that maybe the answer I would have given a few months ago is not the answer that I would give now.

You know, I always thought that the reason that it was so important for our kids to go on lots of dates with good LDS kids was because we wanted them to make sure that they would always be dating people who would be worthy to take them to the temple eventually. Obviously, for the most part, the people they are dating at this point in their life are not dating people with the end goal of a temple marriage. It is more of a practice run, giving them the experiences they will need so that they will be prepared when they are ready to start making eternal sorts of decisions. I explained all of that in my gushing post that I cited above, and there's a bit more of an explanation in my My Disturbing Realization post HERE. But, you know, Laney has never, ever really questioned whether or not she would be marrying in the temple. It is just going to happen. Without a doubt. And she was going to do whatever it takes to get there. So she really didn't need to be driven all over the country to convince her that she needed to date good, righteous young men. She already knew that and made that requirement for herself.

But after Laney came back to the hotel on Saturday night after her day with Heath we had a little conversation. It was pretty short because by this time she was exhausted after a long, eventful day. So we didn't talk a lot, and we didn't talk much in depth, but Laney said a couple of things that made me think. So even though it was late, and I was pretty tired, I sat up for a long time and thought about some of the things that Laney had said. And do you know what I realized? I realized that there was another danger to living out in the middle of nowhere that I hadn't really thought of before. It's nothing crazy or so dangerous that our kids are in true peril or anything like that. But it is something that we will need to be aware of as all of our children grow up.

I know. It's another long Melissa post, but bear with me here.

Laney has never lacked for dates. Like I wrote in my Gushing post, Herman has been actively setting her up with guys since she turned 16. So much of this was kind of groundbreaking in this area because so many of the youth were not group dating, and if they dated at all, it was with the intention of forming boyfriend/girlfriend relationships. That has driven Herman crazy. He wanted this tradition to change, and Laney was the lucky girl who got to try and lead the way in this. So she went out with lots of different young men from the stake and a few from outside the area. And with the help of a few of her friends it seems as if the tradition is changing here in a small way. Hurray for that!

I have to put a small disclaimer here. When I talk about the lack of "superstar" young men it will probably sound as if I'm saying that the young men in our stake are just a bunch of losers. That is not true. Not at all. There are lots of top notch young men in all of the units of our stake. What separates the "superstars" from the ordinary great guys in my opinion is the enthusiasm they have for the Gospel. It isn't just a set of expectations that they meet, but it is something that they do because they LOVE it. And there aren't a lot of guys anywhere that quite reach that standard. And there definitely aren't a lot of young men who are open about their enthusiasm for the Gospel. There aren't exactly a lot of young women that reach that standard either. And lots of these young men and women, although they aren't at superstar status yet, will eventually reach it. I'm not condemning everyone here.

But here is the problem with living in an area with a limited number of "superstar" young men. When there are a dozen "superstar" young women, but only one or two "superstar" young men, it is almost a given that some of those young women are not going to be dating those super young men. Ever. It's a simple law of averages here. Too many young women, not enough young men. It really hasn't been that big of a deal. Laney has never, ever complained at all about this. And I haven't really worried that much about it. While they plan their group dates Laney's friends might end up on the date with the superstars (Ugh! I've got to figure out a better descriptive word for them!), and Laney would go out with someone else. A lot of the time Laney would choose to ask out the guys who didn't get the opportunity to go on dates much. And I have always loved this about Laney. She can go out with anyone and make them feel comfortable and respected. Sometimes her patience and kindness amaze me. And I know there are a few moms out there who LOVE Laney because she is the only girl at this age who can date their sons who might have personality quirks that make other girls shy away from them.

As I talked to Laney on Saturday night, though, I started to see that maybe one of the risks of growing up in this area is that Laney might start to believe that the most stellar young men are out of her league. I wondered if Laney was coming to think that those young men would always choose the other girls, and not her, when it came time to choose a person to date. She never said this. So I'm reading a lot into her words (but I think that that was one of the things I agreed to do in my parenting contract too). Herman thinks that I am overthinking everything -- that Laney's feelings in this area are just typical teenage girl anxiety.  Maybe so. But it did make me think about how important it was for us to give her opportunities to date stellar young men so that she could begin to see her own awesomeness when it comes to the dating pool. Now, I don't want anyone to think that Laney is sitting around bemoaning her lack of great qualities. She's not. Laney has a great understanding of her own self worth. She doesn't struggle with feelings of insecurity like I did at her age. She is a bright, confident young woman. She's talented. And there are people out there who will appreciate those great qualities in her.

So that's why I didn't bat an eye about driving her to Indianapolis for a date with Heath. He is definitely stellar. And I know that he appreciates Laney for who she is. And I am grateful for that. Having such a great weekend of activities with Heath was very good for Laney. They seem to have a great friendship for only having known each other for so little time. That makes me happy.

It's got to be hard for Laney to be the big experiment in our parenting adventures. We really are trying to do our best, and I know we have to be failing miserably some of the time. But driving to Indianapolis was something that I consider a privilege. I'd do it again in a heartbeat -- but probably not next week or anything like that. We do have some limits.

I just love this picture!
To me, it shows Laney's personality so well!