Raising a pre teen boy in a regular world…and failing.

I asked Levi if I could share what happened this past weekend, and he said yes.

It’s really easy to share all the victories on social media. The slow days, the peace, the success, the humor, the vacations, the holy moments. It’s much harder to reveal like yea, we’re in the trenches too. 

The only reason I’m writing about this is because there is an illusion in the Christian world that our kids are going to get it right the first time, every time. I’ve fallen into this trap my entire motherhood; projecting onto Levi what I feel is either my success or my failure. In Rome, Father Louis said to me on a crowded cobblestone street, “however he feels about this trip is his, not yours. Let him feel it, it doesn’t reflect you.” He saw my insecurities pile up when Levi wasn’t enthralled with the 14,000^th religious building we passed. 

Because it’s just me raising Levi, I often don’t realize that I’m holding my breath. Wondering will he choose the things I’m teaching him, the things I love, or will curiosity win out, and he’ll choose things I’ve warned him against. Levi is a giant of a human, not just in size for a 12 year old, but in presence. He is opinionated, strong willed, emotional, intelligent, motivated, hysterical, and loud. So very loud. He is also really broken. He has wounds that he tries to keep sealed up, but if I’m lucky, I can find an entrance way and let them bleed out a little bit, release some of his own pain. God is not a friend of his, in his mind. He’s confused why God didn’t allow his parents to be together, if God knew it would cause him this much pain. He’s angry at God that no matter how many times he’s asked Him to heal my dad, my dad remains lifeless. I’ve surrendered this, because that is Levi’s faith journey. He can be angry, he can have the questions, those aren’t a problem for God. I have full and complete faith that God will lead him where He needs to, and that these pains my son carries are all part of the plan.

But damn, it’s hard.

So to the point. Levi was at a football game with friends last week, and someone brought a vape. They were all passing it around, and he tried it.

He didn’t tell me. The next morning at football practice the kids were a buzz with this news, but Levi’s name was never mentioned. The main coach let them know he’ll find out who did it, and there will be punishments.

Levi’s best friend came trotting over to me after to ask my opinion on it all (love him for this), and that’s when Levi said, “oh yeah, that was happening.”

And here’s the crux of it all. He lied to me. He lied in front of other parents. He lied to his coach. 

I didn’t know he was lying. I gave him many outs. I naively looked him in the eye and said this is your last chance to tell me the truth, and then I believed him. We had a great conversation about curiosity and temptation, in which he told me he is very tempted because he likes the way the rings of smoke look (yup, just a giant man child).

Fast forward to the evening, and we’re at the local fair here. Thousands of people, so much noise, so much movement and so many smells. My phone rings, and it’s one of the moms of another boy involved. She lets me know that in fact yes, Levi had participated. 

This is where I fail. I hang up, and I feel like I’m suffocating. A true rage passes through me. Not because of the act, because of the lies. My thoughts go a 100 miles away from me, of what Levi will choose in the future, what other parents will think of him now, what they’ll think of ME now. I’m embarrassed, ashamed, and overwhelmed. 

We find a bench and sit down. Levi meets up with us a little while later and he immediately knows when he sees me that I found out the truth. That child has been reading my body language since he could crawl. 

“Ok, can I tell you the truth, now?” He asks, wringing his hands like he always has when he’s nervous, his body going up on his tiptoes, so then he’s effectively 4 inches taller than me. 

“Oh sure, the truth would be good finally, yeah.” I respond.

He tells me he tried it once. Then he felt so upset at himself he left the other kids. It’s why his name was never mentioned,  no one saw him. He starts to cry, breathe all funny.

I tell him to go enjoy the fair with his friends and we’ll talk about it at home. Inside I’m completely ill equipped to be dealing with my son’s failures, I have yet to deal with my own. But I try to remain steady, so he has something to tether himself to.

“But what about coach? Coach will hate me now. He’ll be so disappointed. He won’t think of me the same anymore.”

I have to say, I was surprised this was the first thing he’s worried about. Not me. Not his dad. Not his grandma or uncles. His football coach. 

I convince him to go on a few more rides, and I call his dad.

There, while the flying Veranda’s Family Circus trapeze across the sunset, his dad calms me. He is level headed. Patient. He takes a breath on the phone, comes up with a plan for me. I feel the weight of it in that moment, the aloneness of single parenting. It doesn’t escape me that his dad has grown into a man who truly seeks what is good and holy, has learned the skill of empathy that threatens to take my breath away. For a moment, I don’t feel out to sea, drifting in the expanse. For a moment, I feel secure.

The fair ends. His best friend in the car encourages him the entire ride home, a true friend. At one point asked him why he didn’t just tell the truth, which made me laugh. Like yeah dude, why all this?

Because he was afraid. In his own mind, he was afraid of the consequences. Lying is so easy, is it not? Have I never lied? Of course I’ve lied. I kept my own pregnancy hidden for weeks, causing a wake of absolute destruction simply because I didn’t tell the truth, because I was afraid of all the what ifs, all the beliefs that pile up in our minds when we feel out of control.

The present moment, the thing that is ACTUALLY happening, is always easier. Safer. Less scary. Our brains just don’t realize this unless we train them to.

This is how it all ended. He texted his coach asking to talk the next day. He continued to cry on and off, then proceed to be really angry with me, then cry again. I decided there was enough of that, that if mistakes can’t be endured then we’ll never survive actual teenage years. I prayed over him. I asked Saint Carlo to guide his heart in all this.

On the ride to his football game that Sunday afternoon, he was all nerves. He knew he was about to talk to his coach face to face, someone who has become a consistent masculine figure in his life, someone who without realizing it, is forming him as well. He joked that telling his coach felt like going to confession. “Do you think Coach will give me three Hail Marys?” Under my breath I was praying my own Hail Mary that what coach decided wasn’t as grave as being kicked off the team, but we’d accept that if so.

I dunked Levi in holy water, which we literally don’t leave the house without, and sent him on his own walk of shame.

He looked his coach in the eye and apologized. He was benched, along with other boys, for the first half of the game.

From the sidelines he found me, gave me a small thumbs up secretly. 

When we got in the car to go home, a victorious game, the sun still hot, Levi breathed the deepest sigh of relief.

“It feels so good to tell the truth. I’m so glad that all happened. Coach still loves me, you still love me, dad still loves me,” he says, looking out the window, his curls stuck to his forehead.

“It was never a matter of love, Levi,” I tell him. 

There’s his wound. His belief that he somehow caused the brokenness around him. That his dad has another beautiful family because he wasn’t good enough, no matter how many times it’s shown or told to him otherwise. Only God can heal that wound. We do our best to tend to it.

So that’s my weekend story. We are Christians, and we fail. I know Levi will make a myriad of mistakes down the line, and I’d be remiss to forget how many mistakes I’ve made, still make. It’s with the right support and encouragement that we’re able to survive it all. So I welcome judgement, because I know the size of the thorn in my own eye. I also know that life is not easy, and it’s not social media perfect. There is freedom and there is grace, and we really can’t ask for more.

Levi is a good kid. Our mistakes don’t define us. And honestly, I’m talking to myself here. 

We’re all good kids, just trying to make our way home.