An article on Time's Web site caught my attention this morning. The gist is this: girls' brains are hard-wired for social interation.
Not that this news is any surprise to me. Spend any time with girls and you'll notice that everything, and I do mean everything, in a girl's world revolves around relationships. What they wear. What movies they watch. How well they do in school. All in part (or in whole) determined by relationships. Relationships with friends. Teachers. Parents. Coaches. The opposite gender. Even their "relationships" with people in the media.
Today's article was a reminder to me that in everything I do with girls' ministry, I need to be aware of a girl's natural, God-given bent toward relationships. When I get completely frustrated with them talking too much during a Bible study, I need to be more patient. When I do "forced interaction" with girls they're not close to, I need to be prepared for a little flack. If I am trying to reach out to a girl who's struggling, I need to reach out to her friends, too. I need to be OK with the fact that not every girl in my group is going to be best of friends, sit around a campfire holding hands and sing "It only takes a spark...."
And, the article was stark reminder to me of what can happen to a girl who does not have solid, strong, healthy relationships. Just recently in the news in Nashville, a young woman killed her famous boyfriend and then herself. Speculation is that she feared he was breaking up with her, so she killed him and then tried to stage the scene so that when she killed herself, she would fall against him in a final picture of her dying love.
Other stories don't make the headlines, but they are just as serious: girls who get into bad relationships because they're looking for someone to love them; girls who choose to taunt and abuse (sometimes physically) another girl in order to "fit in" or because the victim somehow threatened her social status; girls who feel alone and abandoned, outcast and forgotten.
When it's all said and done, it doesn't matter how many events we have in girls' ministry or how "cool" all of them are if those events leave girls feeling disconnected. If we don't build relationships with girls and help them build a relationships with God and others, then we've missed meeting their deepest needs.
How do you try to build relationships with girls? How do you help girls build relationships with others?
