I never intended to be hanging out with high schoolers outside of my own. I still feel the ringing sense of relief that I am through those daunting, delightful years. However, one of the best pieces of advice I received in the early years of parenting was to love your children’s friends. This piece of advice has settled into my soul and become a habit in my home. Thus, I find myself doing a version of high school ministry: picking up a crew of unaccompanied teenagers for church every Sunday, cutting their friends’ hair, and trying to keep up with the lingo and the emojis. (Hint: no periods. They imply anger and frustration; no ellipses: they imply the same).

As I hang out with these teenagers, I see and sense the hunger in them to belong, if not to the inner circle, at least to an inner circle. The shifting loyalties and rezoning of friend lines make me tired as a listener. I cannot imagine them as one living through them again. And yet, I find the same deep desire still within me, aching for a place to belong solidly and securely. In an essay in The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis called this the desire to be in “the Inner Ring.”

The Power of the Inner Ring

Lewis’s description of the inner ring rings true for teenagers (and those who parent them).

“You are never formally and explicitly admitted by anyone. You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that it exists and that you are outside it, and then later, perhaps, that you are inside it. There are what correspond to passwords, but they too are spontaneous and informal. A particular slang, the use of particular nicknames, an allusive manner of conversation are the marks. But it is not constant. It is not easy, even at a given moment, to say who is inside and who is outside. Some people are obviously in and some are obviously out, but there are always several on the border line.”

Even as I type our Lewis’s words,, I feel the exhilaration and the exhaustion of wanting to be in the inner ring both for myself and for my children. I feel it on the sidelines of soccer games, before dances, and even at church. I see the insecurity when the lines are shaken up and the pain when they find themselves on the outs. I feel it deeply because I still experience the same things as an adult. 

Lewis wisely advises his young audience to know and respect the power of wanting to be in the inner ring. He tells them (and me), “The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it.”

Outsiders Brought In

I have found that the only way to break this desire is to see it fulfilled completely through the gospel. The Scriptures tell me that I was created to be an “insider with God,” welcomed into the overflowing love of the Trinity. I chose to be an outsider by usurping God on the throne in my heart. Yet, at great cost to himself, he purchased me back so he might welcome me in fully and forever.

The story of Jesus’s interaction with Zacchaeus shows my soul the hospitable love of God, the invitation to the outsiders to be brought in (Luke 19: 1–10). The fact that Jesus saw him, hidden as he was in a tree and by his own shame, named him, and invited him into intimate fellowship brings me to tears as I parent teenagers (and reparent the teenager in me). This unexpected, undeserved welcome changed Zacchaeus instantly. Such is the power of belonging and secure love.

I long for my children what I long for myself: a deeply-seated awareness that Christ has invited us into the Inner Ring from which our desire for belonging to inner rings comes. There is no shifting in the nature of our God. There is nothing that can separate God’s children from his love (Romans 8: 31-39). Such a secure inner ring enables us to weather the constantly-shifting lines of human relationships until we are with our Triune God and see him as he is (1 Corinthians 13: 12; 1 John 3: 2).