It’s been awhile. I’ve learned that my soul gets quiet when life gets loud – and life with three teenaged sons is most definitely loud. I’ve always prayed that we would be the home where everyone gathers, but I teeter on retro-actively cancelling those prayers when a raucous crew is playing Catan well past my bedtime.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to be the parent who instills hope rather than dread for the teenaged years. And that remains true; however, I’ve grown in my commitment to speak about these years with all the nuance, complexity, and exhaustion they entail. Part of the reason so few books exist about these years (as compared to the plethora of parenting books for the early years of parenting) is a desire to protect the stories of the budding men and women in our homes.

Stories are sacred. They are to be caught tenderly and held carefully. They are to be stored in safe places by even safer people. Stories (and more significantly the souls living them) are shy. They are simultaneously fragile and sturdy. They aren’t to be peddled or sold or made into pithy lessons- which leads me to the glorious reality that the Lord has been pressing into me for the past few weeks: parents of teenagers are story catchers.

What a wonder that we move from catching fireflies or lizards with our children to catching their stories.

In his delightful coming-of-age story, Martin Marten, Brian Doyle captures the wonder of catching stories:

“The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, than we could tell each other in a hundred years. The word amazing isn’t much of a word for how amazing that is. The fact is that there are more stories in the world than there are fish in the sea or birds in the air or lies among politicians. You could be sad at how many stories go untold, but you could also be delighted at how many stories we catch and share in delight and wonder and astonishment and illumination and sometimes even epiphany.”

Catching Stories

There are so many complex dynamics during the teenage years. These are tensions to be managed, not problems to be solved. There is no magic formula (and even if there were for one child, it likely wouldn’t work with the next). One of the complexities of parenting teenagers is the tension of releasing and receiving.

If I am honest with you, my heart still sinks a little when my teenagers finish their dinner and rush out the door to the next thing with the next friend. Selfishly, I want to lock them up in a version of citizen’s arrest. To be certain, there are times to circle the wagons and rope those wanderers into some slightly-engineered family fun. That said, releasing these blossoming adults into broader worlds is part of our responsibility. Our loss is their and their growing world’s gain.

As sad as I am to see that door close (don’t worry, I put on a brave face and make the best of it), I am giddy when that door gaps open again. I call these brief few minutes the dividing of the spoils- that language makes it sound as important as these moments are. The receiving is just as important as the releasing.

This is not the time to be looking at one’s phone or putting away the dishes or continuing the task at hand. The world must stop for the moment; there are stories to catch. The trick is that you don’t know what kind of stories you’ll be catching, so you have to quickly find the right relational gear and posture.

They could be hysterical stories of semi-poor decisions that turned into excellent experiences – in this case, one must not gasp in fear or slip into a lecture series. One must smile and revel at the sense of novelty and adventure. They are gathering the stories that they will use in lectures for their future children.

They could be sad stories of feeling lost and alone. These are the hardest to catch without over-responding or being tempted to turn into a vigilante with a personal vendetta. These stories are fragile, so fragile they often aren’t told with words. Sighs, shuffles, and even slammed doors are your hints to the kind of story you get the privilege of drawing out and holding.

They could be mysteries- most of them are. These are stories mid-chapter, mid-sentence, or even mid-word. Not much to report yet. Even so, your job is to peer into the progress and to see the snippets.

Reframing

Kin to storycatching is reframing. The problem with all humans – especially those who are still very much in the process of learning to be mature humans – is our limited, bifocal vision. We aren’t owls who can rotate our necks nearly full circle. We aren’t flies with eyes eerily tossed all over torsos. Our physical limitations of sight mirror our soul’s limited purview. Sometimes, we can’t see our own stories well; we are too close and our vision gets blurred. We need someone who can step back and help us see a different perspective-or at least acknowledge that we don’t see every angle.

What else is true? What are other possibilities? Let’s think of three other potential explanations for why so-and-so might have said such-and-such. I wonder… Remember when… Something I’ve noticed…

Friends, this work is sacred. Sure, the hours for the role of resident storycatcher are intermittent, at best. It’s true that the pay is deferred, sometimes for decades. But if you aren’t present and postured to catch them, they might become those sad stories that are stored away in a dusty box and left untold. Worse still, those stories might be wrongly interpreted and result in false, shifty narratives that don’t align with the story of The Storyteller of All Storytellers.

Tired parents of teenagers, please keep sitting on the couch perched to catch the stories. This is sacred work, and, as such, it receives the sanction and strength of the Great Storyteller.