The Secret Life of the {Christian} American Teenager

I turned 17 yesterday. Yep, 17 years of living. 6,205 days. 148,920 hours. 8,935,200 minutes.After all this time, you'd think I'd have it all figured out right? Ha.
There's a new show on AbcFamily, called the Secret Life of the American Teenager, which is about a young american teenager who finds out she's pregnant, and has a whole bunch of school drama. But the truth is: most of that stuff is bologna. Here's what is really going on in the head of a teenager:

1} Friends: i'm trying to figure out who my friends really are; who I can count on; who I consider my best friends. With a highschool as large as ours, it's easy to make a lot of friends. But just because I have all those friends doesn't mean that I feel comfortable talking to every single one of them about my problems and feelings.

2} Finding Myself: I'm DEFINITELY not an adult, but I'm definitely not a kid either. it's hard to try and find that balance. plus, i'm now a junior in high school. that means i'm starting to think about college and future goals. that's a very daunting question mark. I'm starting to look for positive personal qualities that I can grow on, but it's always easier to find all of my negative qualities. {NEGATIVE QUALITY # 44: Its easier to find all of my negative qualities. lol}

3} Family: I'm starting to realize that I can't keep acting like a child. I still have to take out the trash, feed the cats, and fold the laundry, no matter how much i don't feel like it. I've got to balance my time: between taking 'me time', hanging out with my family, doing the normal day-to-day chores, school, etc. Plus, i'm realizing that if my relationship with my family is going to improve {not that it's bad!} I'm going to have to WORK to make them improve. And I can't use the excuse that I'm not working on it because they aren't. *In order to change how the world thinks, you first have to change how you think.* And in a large family, it's easy to sort of fade into the background.

4} Feelings: As a teenager watching the world around me, everyone else seems like they've got their acts together. If I'm not careful, it's easy to believe that they have the perfect clothes, the perfect hair, the perfect dreams, the perfect life. But I know that it isn't true. Everyone else has their problems as well. I'm starting to realize that maybe the world doesn't revolve around me. {Ok, i'll go ahead and apologize now to all of my die-hard fans who think i'm the center of the universe. but don't sweat it: i'll still let y'all be my groupies :) }

5} Faith: Getting older makes me examin my beliefs a little bit more. I am a christian, so there really isn't the question of "what do I believe", it's "why do I believe what I believe?" People in my family that once believed like I do have fallen away, so it's dificult to understand where they started to wander. I can tell myself a million times that I won't make the same mistakes; that I won't be like they are. But then, how many times did they tell themselves that when they were 17? In my grade alone, I can think of at least 3 girls who got pregnant this year, and there are at least 4 or 5 other girls that are in a different grade {but still go to my school} who are pregnant. The point of telling you that: christians are definitely a minority. It gets increasingly difficult to stand strong in my beliefs as I get older. Not because I think that they're wrong, but because there are so few who are christians, and act like it. I mean, there are a lot of people who go to church on Sunday, but then on Monday morning at school, they're cussing more than the non-christians!

So there you have it: what really goes on in an {Christian} American Teen's life. It isn't what you'd see on MTV, and it definitely isn't like all the reality shows. How ironic <3