Our 30 Day Challenge
Music. It can directly impact your teen and their crisis. In fact, it can also worsen their crisis to the extent of real harm and even death.
When my teen was going through her depression, it wasn’t the normal sad day that many of us have. It came with suicidal ideology and tendencies. She was also an avid music listener. It was either the lyrics or the beat that drew her into the world of particular songs that she felt related to her.
Many of these song lyrics talked about death, sadness, loneliness, pain, and hurt with no hope. I remember one particular song she had heard that spoke about the death of their long time love. It affected the person who was singing it to the point of themselves having this personal discussion as to whether or not to join their loved one who couldn’t handle life anymore.
This kind of music only encouraged more loss and triggered her tendencies of not wanting to go on with life. Her refusal of medication was another battle to deal with. What I did find that helped lift those feelings of despair, were long car rides with the window down and the music on. However, in order for her to have that car ride, she could only listen to KLOVE.
KLOVE is a Christian station that has been around for decades with a strong following of people, young and old, whose lives have been touched in a dramatic way because of the music. I would often hear stories of drug addicts, homeless people, and married couples on the verge of divorce, have their lives altered for the better because of listening to this one station.
As a teen, they have their own set of styles of music that means something to them. At first, she wasn’t too thrilled about this deal. So, I challenged her to do 30 days only to listen to the music on this station. That was the only thing she had to do. I wanted to prove to her that her life would be more at peace during those 30 days than any other time in her life.
And so it began. Each car ride, each day, filled with music from KLOVE. After a few weeks, she openly shared that when she listened to her own music and then to KLOVE, she felt a peace that she couldn’t find within her own tunes. Before I knew it, she was asking me to add songs that she heard from the station onto an IPOD for her to listen too.
I didn’t have to say a word. I let her figure it out on her own how much music plays a part in the healing or the hurting of the heart. During those 30 days, we talked honestly about suicide, depression, oppression, the world and its woes, and how God cares about the broken.
This wasn’t just an experiment to help my teen. It also had given me hope as a parent by listening to the encouraging lyrics. Each song she heard spoke a silent whisper into her ears of how much God loved her and felt her tears and pain. It also imparted hope within my own heart that my teen would be okay.
In the end, her IPOD was filled with over ninety percent of KLOVE music that began to mend the brokenness in my teen.
I have added a Music Page (Music That Ministers) for parents and teens to be ministered to by the songs we often listened and sang to. May your spirit be inspired and given a new anchor of hope to hold onto.
