My memories of middle school are far from positive. I remember clique’s and mean girls and fads and comparing myself to everyone else. These days, the challenges middle schoolers face are even greater. Threats of violence, substance use, eating disorders, and more often lurk just behind the school’s entrance.
This past week, I was a guest speaker for our middle school girls ministry, Girl Talk. About once a month, the leaders invite a guest speaker to come and teach the girls something, such as a skill or craft. They’ve had speakers come and talk about photography, art, exercise, cake decorating, card making, etc. When I originally offered to speak, I couldn’t think of any skill or craft I could share. I’m not particularly creative or have an interesting hobby. It’s been a long time since I even worked with girls this age, so I hesitated, wondering what I could share with young teen girls that would interest them.
Then I remembered an activity I used to do with teens, long ago when I worked with children-doing therapeutic collage.
I began by talking with the girls about gratitude. We read from 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” I talked with them about what it means to give thanks in all things. We discussed different scenarios where it might be hard to give thanks. Having recently experienced challenges in their schools, including a death by suicide and a death by illness, this topic was timely.
I then shared with them my gratitude list I had started three years ago. I challenged the girls to begin their own list of ongoing thanks. I explained keeping a gratitude list is a lot like going on a treasure hunt, searching and seeking out the gifts God gives to His children each day. I showed them examples and talked about the different ways to create a gratitude list: writing it down in a journal, taking photos, and even collaging.
We spread magazines across the table and began working on decorating journals and cutting out pictures of words and items for which we are grateful. (Ann‘s printouts for decorating gratitude journals came in handy).
The girls cut and cut and cut some more.
Then they glued their words and images into their journals. Everyone went around and shared what they had created and what they were thankful for.
Today’s world is challening for young teens. They face temptations, false gods, darkness, and lies each and every day. By focusing on the God’s gifts of grace, a light shines in that darkness. It’s that light that shows them the way to the Father.
I don’t know how many will take my challenge to keep a gratitude list. I hope they all do. I am thankful for the opportunity to share the light given to me. As it turns out, passing on the joy of counting gifts to these sweet girls turned out to be a gift for me as well.
Continuing my own gratitude list (#1509-1532):
Sharing my experiences from counting His graces
A group of sweet and adorable middle school girls
Giggles, smiles, laughter, and lots of pink
Working on my own collage
Finishing my Tuesday morning bible study-the ladies who came all semester have been such a blessing to me
My church community
My back pain acting up again reminding me that He is my strength
The boys extending extra grace to me when I wasn’t myself
My chiropractor who saw me twice this week
Learning about another blogger going to SheSpeaks-hoping to meet up with her!
Watching my son cross over from Tiger Cub to Wolf at the Cub Scouts ceremony
A friend and I making impromptu plans to get together for dinner because both our spouses were out of town
Learning that our spouses ended up meeting up for dinner as well, in Atlanta:)
Sunshine after the rain
Attending our homeschool groups end of the year celebration
My little guy lending an extra pair of shoes we had in the car to a friend who forgot his at the homeschool event
Swimming with the boys before it rained
Marble run toy
A quiet, lazy Saturday
Husband setting up a date night for us all on his own:)
Galatians 3:1-5
Laughing my way through Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator with my oldest
Summer plans underway
Linking up with:
Oh, I wish you could come and do that with our youth group girls. What a great excercise. My daughter would totally dig that. I have back pain too. It wasn’t until someone helped me identify where it all begin (when I first held myself tight as a child) that I started to conquer it. Its amazing how much of my physcial stuff has spiritual roots. Hope you are free from pain.
Linking up after you at Playdates with God - what a great idea you shared with the middle school girls! So good to encourage them to have grateful hearts; especially good to start at that young age. Am sure it made a huge impact on them.
This is so awesome! I am inspired….I have a 12 year old daughter and an 18 year old daughter — I think they would love to do this! Maybe even my 10 year old boy would
Thank you for sharing!
I love that you shared this with these young girls…My daughter started one during a time of struggling…after a while she shared how counting is changing her. I believe whether now or in the future …these girls will draw on this truth you shared…blessings to you~
Love that you shared the idea of a gratitude journal with the girls. It’s something that will stick with them and so nice that they’ve got a start on it now…rather than later.
Love this! What a great idea.
and
my favorite:
“sunshine after the rain”
What a creative way to positively impact the lives of young ladies!
I love this quote, “By focusing on the God’s gifts of grace, a light shines in that darkness.”
So true! We find God’s grace where we look to find it. And His grace embraced by a thankful heart, never fails to be a light in the darkness.
What a beautiful ministry to those young girls! What a blessing you are! Thank you for the investment you made. Teaching our kids to have hearts of gratitude is foundational to loving Christ and shining for Him.
Beautiful post!
Wow, what a fabulous opportunity! I love cutting old magazines and searching photos and words that mean something to me. Terrific hands-on activity for them, I love it! I may have to take a morning to do this in our little school
What a wonderful idea! The idea of being grateful in all the challenges of life for a middle school girl and on into their adult lives. Hopefully this will be remembered for a long time by them as they continue to use their journals! Thanks for sharing this fantastic idea.
Brilliant idea, Christina! love it.
(and I was so thrilled seeing Gal 3: 1-5 on your list this week, as it made my journal this last week, too! how fun…
You came up with the “perfect” idea for young teen girls, Christina! Kudos to you and thanks for reminding “us” of how important it is to pass on joy!
Love this idea of sharing the gratitude journal with the girls! Such an important time in their lives to be thinking that way. And I love that you took something that’s a challenge for adults and presented it in an engaging way for them. I’m a huge believer that kids and young adults can understand a whole lot more and have a more passionate relationship with Christ than we give them credit for.
I love this! Yeah! I’m going to do this with my daughters this summer, and I’m going to use it with the middle school kids at church. Thanks Christina!
What an awesome experience!! I worked in a charter high school. My heart went out to all the kids there especially the girls. Girls need to be surrounded with positive people. God bless you for being a positive person to those girls. I assure you that you impacted those girls!!
Love love love this: middle school girls giggles, smiles, laughter, and lots of pink
Oh how I love those girl moments. My weekend was girls but we were getting ready for my sons wedding. Such a precious time!
This is so cool! What an amazing way to introduce the practice of gratitude to the next generation. And you said you weren’t particularly creative-ha!
Sharing this.
I love this idea! I have done this type of thing on poster board, but never in a journal. They must have loved it!
Great idea. Thanks for taking the time to take pics of every step and then comment. Hope they had a great time.
Hi Christina, I dont know how to reply to comments on my blog (embarassing right) so, I’m responding to your question here (sorry). The huntington library you saw on my blog is perhaps a 2 hour drive from San Diego
Pretty far.
Thanks so much for surfing into my blog, I appreciated your visit. Uour blogs are very inspirational and I always get renewed from them.
I’m also trying to ignite sparks of passion for our Lord in my area of the world wide web and pray that together we can continue to make great strides of encouragement and increasing members in His Kingdom.
God bless you!!
Patty
I love this project, Christine - what a great idea. And what a blessing you are to those girls! {excited to meet you at She Speaks, too
}
Thank you for sharing this amazing time you spent with these girls. What a blessing you were to them. You have made me finally make a decision to start my GRATITUDE (Blessed) list..I have read so many blogs about a list and I have not yet started one. But I will now. You have done something in the lives of these girls…some of the seed will land on fertile soil, and hopefully be watered and it will grow, some seed will fall on hardened soil and will die. But the fact that you were willing to make a stand for your faith and your belief will be blessed. Thank you.
My middle school and teen years are not ones filled with happiness. My counselor in highschool had me work on a similar project. I left it alone for years and like you…began counting…and it has helped me regain the joy that God desires. Thank you for your beautiful post!
Coming over to visit from Thankful Thursday. This is beautiful! I wish more people would put such an investment into our children today! What a blessing you were to them!
Thank you for linking up! I have a middle school age daughter and the same memories from middle school. We homeschool so I don’t see a lot of those influences in my daughter’s life-thank God! I do love the idea of these collages, though and I think we will work on something like that this week! Thank you for the inspiration!