Dear Incoming High School Freshman Girl:

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Back to School is right around the corner and there’s one particular group of people who are on my heart: incoming High School Freshman Girls. I remember those days and all the anxiety, fear and excitement that was in my heart as I was about ready to enter high school.

I came to a point in my high school life where I became the “weird girl” who was way less concerned about fitting into cliques or social norms and way more concerned about treating people with honor and kindness.

Something inside me knew that after high school, that was what would matter the most. People would never remember which social circle I was in or whether I had name brand shoes or jeans, but they would always remember the type of person that I was and how I treated them and the way that I made them feel.

Knowing that has served me well post High School, along with the other things that I’m about to share in this episode.

I’m spilling the deets on #allthethings: Popularity, Peer Pressure, Friendship, Dating, Sex and Life after Graduation in this bonus episode of the Stepping into a Joy Filled Life podcast.

Alright, my dear. So you’re entering High School. This is such an exciting time, yet it’s totally normal if you’re feeling a little bit anxious and nervous, too. I totally felt the same way before my freshman year.

Not to sound old or cliche, but wisdom really does come with age. And believe me girl, I’ve lived and learned. Looking back at my high school days, I really don’t think I’d change the past, because it helped grow me into the person who I am today. But if I’d known back then, the things I’m about to share with you now it would have been a smoother ride for sure…. Less stress, less tears, less heartache.

I’m here to help you have your best year yet.

Are you ready? Let’s do it.

Let’s talk about Popularity, Peer Pressure and Friendship:

Girl, you are beautiful. Beauty bubbles out of the joy in the heart. It comes from knowing that you are wonderfully made. You were created by God, in his image. He says you are good. He says you are loved and accepted.

If you will spend more time growing yourself and marinating in wisdom and truth, then you do attempting to grow in popularity, you will be immeasurably ahead of your classmates who thrive on being popular. Not that it’s a competition, because it’s not. The only person you should ever be competing with… is yourself. Strive to become the very best version of you. Period.

Popularity doesn’t pay the bills, sweet girl. When high school is over, college professors, employers and other adults… they will care zero about how popular you were in high school.

They will want to know much more important things, like are you respectful, kind, honorable, confident, truthful? Do you show up on time? Are you a person of integrity? Will you do what you say you’re going to do?

The popularity game is just that, it’s a game. And it’s a game that has no winner. Choose not to play.

Let me also address this right now. There WILL be haters, in your school, on social media and in real, actual life, for the rest of your life. Haters hate because they are jealous or insecure. When people are mean, it says nothing about you and everything about them.

Here’s the secret to crushing the hate, that will undoubtedly be thrown your way at some point.

Kindness.

You can stop people from being mean by being ridiculously kind back to them. When people start throwing mean comments your way, smother them with kind words.

“Thank you.”

“Have a great day.”

“Love your outfit.”

Throw a sincere kind word or compliment at a hater, and you will shut them down.

I’d be surprised if you find anything outside of a 100% success rate with this.

Ok, deep breath. We’re going to cover the C-word.

Yep… Comparison.

Oh girl… comparison will steal. your. joy.

The comparison game might just be more dangerous than the popularity game. You’re better off to not even play.

You know what trumps comparison? Contentment.

I remember my first years of high school, when I thought I had to have name brand everything because alllll the other kids had name brand this or that. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Looking back, I really feel like a jerk when I consider all the undue pressure I put on my parents. Seriously girl, buying name brand everything is a total waste of money. And expecting your parents to buy you name brand everything is a serious lack of respect.

I promise you, your parents are busting their butt to give you a childhood better than what they had. They are making so many sacrifices that you don’t even know about. And they love you deeper than you can imagine. Tell your parents thank you for all that they do for you.

Peer pressure may tell you that you have to be, say, have or do this or that. Shut down comparison and peer pressure with contentment and truth. Truth will often come as a fire-y feeling in the pit of your stomach or a voice in your head that tells you to say “no.” Listen to that still, small voice!

You don’t have to have name brand clothes to be cool. You don’t have to have a boyfriend to be cool. You don’t have to gossip or lie or drink to be cool.

You know what’s cool?

Being kind. Telling the truth. Honoring and respecting your parents. Being a good example. Doing the right thing. Having goals and dreams and chasing after them because that’s what God planted inside your heart. Pursing art or music or sports or a job… because, and only because it’s what lights YOU up. Not because someone else says you should or shouldn’t do it.

That’s cool!

You know what else is cool? Choosing friends who will bring out the best in you.

Did you know that you will become the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with?

Let me repeat that… you will become just like the 5 friends who you hang out with the most.

Let that sink in.

As this new school year approaches, close your eyes and think for just a second about your life down the road.

Who do you want to grow up to be? What do you want to grow up to be?

My guess is you want to become a productive, honorable, successful, happy adult. Maybe you want to be a nurse, an educator, a mom, a lawyer, a business owner, a photographer, or a counselor someday. Start feeding that dream right now, by hanging out with the type of friends who will support that version of you.

Here’s the truth, beautiful girl… cool friends might make you look good, but the right friends? GREAT friends? They will bring out the best in you!! They will encourage you to grow. They will cheer you on. They are with you. They are for you.

Popularity, Peer Pressure and Friendship can be summed up like this:

Popularity is a game that you don’t have to play.

Peer pressure can be shut down by truth.

And your friends? They matter. Choose them wisely.

Let’s talk about Boys:

Hear me, sweet girl. Most likely, you’re NOT going to marry your high school boyfriend.

That means it would be way more beneficial to you long term to invest your high school years into yourself, your family and friendships instead of into the boys you date.

In fact, you don’t even have to “date!”

Seriously, weird is the new cool. Your future self will definitely agree with me on this.

Hanging out with groups of friends (boys and girls) instead of one-on-one with a boyfriend, is a great way to have a blast, while protecting yourself and your future.

It will protect your heart.

It will protect your mind.

It will protect your body.

Did you know that a girl can get pregnant the very first time she has sex? Did you know that sexually transmitted diseases can be transferred the very first time someone has sex? Did you know that having sex in high school can totally wreck your heart, your mind and your body?

Sex was designed by God and it’s a gift to be celebrated after marriage, between a man and a woman. It’s a way to create new life and yes, it’s something that feels good, when it unfolds in the special way that God designed it.

Think of sex like this… Imagine if you ordered one of those mattresses on Amazon that comes rolled up in a box and when you open the box, the mattress unfolds and airs up on its own. Even if you wanted to, no matter how hard you tried, you would never be able to wrap that thing back up and fit it correctly back in it’s box. You couldn’t put it back, because the mattress expanded and changed and the change is permanent. You could pretend like you never took it out of the box, but the new shape and form of the mattress would say otherwise. It will never be the same as the way it was created and packaged.

Sex is like that. After the first time, you will never be the same. Even if you hide from it, or try to forget about it or act like it didn’t happen, you are permanently changed.

God covers sex in the Bible. He wants your first experience to be satisfying, happy, safe and within marriage. Not something you’ll regret or feel ashamed about for the rest of your life.

The Bible is not some stern book of rules. It’s not to prevent you from having fun. It was created as a roadmap to help protect us. It allows us to walk in freedom and live an abundant life, the best life!

And trust me… You’ll find the craziest stuff in there: creation, murder, war, miracles, healings, sex, adultery, promises, wanders. The book is anything but boring. If you think Netflix can hold your attention, crack open the Bible and see what you find.

Media and our society have glorified high school sex and they’ve painted a picture that is a complete and total lie. They say that sex = love. They are wrong. Here’s what high school sex really is: dangerous, hurtful, self-serving. It won’t make you feel loved, happy or fulfilled. In contrast, it will leave feeling empty, guilty and ashamed.

I can tell you this, because I’ve been there. I made stupid choices. And it took me years of work to undo the damage I did to myself in those choices that I made.

The truth is that love is kind and not self-serving. It’s not angry, or jealous. True love means putting the other person’s needs ahead of your own. True love? It waits. It honors. It values.

True love is when a man, not a boy wants to grow old with you. It’s when the two of you together, want to get to know each others’ heart on a deep level. It’s when you stand side by side through thick and thin, through sickness and health, through late nights and early mornings, through deaths, births, laughter and tears. True love and commitment looks like bills that don’t get paid on time because you’re building your financial life together and you don’t have it all figured out yet, but you’ve committed to learning the hard lessons, together.

Choose wisely when it comes to the guys you hang out with. If you feel like you need to “fix” them or “save” them, get out. If you feel uncomfortable or unsafe in any way, get out. If you are being pushed to compromise your values, get out. If your boyfriend pressures you into having sex with him because he “loves” you, get out. There are better choices to be made.

Your future self, and your future husband will thank you.

To recap, invest more time into yourself, your family and friendships than boys. And deeply consider making wise choices when it comes to sex.

Finally, let’s talk about Life after High School:

Remember how I said that weird is the new cool? Check this out. When the yearbooks came out my senior year, I quickly flipped to the back of the book to check out the class votes. You know, the part of the yearbook where the classmates vote on who is the best dressed, class clown, always late, etc? I had been voted “most independent.”

What this equated to was “the weird girl who wouldn’t be boxed in to any social circle or norm.” My classmates thought I was strange. And that was okay, because like I said in the beginning of this episode, in the grand scheme of life, the #1 thing that people will remember about you post High School, is the way that you treated them. This includes not only your classmates, but your teachers, principal, your friends’ parents, and even the janitor and lunch lady.

Choose to be honorable, humble and kind. Say please and thank you.

Be the girl who is remembered for making people feel valued and loved.

Be the girl who knows how deeply SHE is loved by God, the one who created her, the Good Father.

I want you to think about your own dad for a second. Maybe he’s a great dad, who is totally there for you and supports you in everything you do. Maybe your dad is around, but not always present in the moment and your heart aches for more of his attention. Maybe your dad isn’t around at all, and that’s left you feeling broken, empty and searching for something to fill the void.

Check this out, dear. the God who created you is better than any dad you can imagine. If you think your dad is great, God is greater. If you ache for your dad’s love and affection, God wants to give it to you. And if your dad has abandoned you, God can fill that void. He will never leave you. He’s always present and he wants to wrap his peace and presence and spirit around you.

No matter how you’ve been treated by your dad or anyone else in your life, God loves you, accepts you and wants the best for you. He wants to rescue, heal and restore you.

Maybe you’ve already made choices in some of the areas we’ve just talked about and you regret them. Maybe you ache to be free and forgiven and washed clean. Maybe you’d give anything for a fresh start, a reset. Maybe you just feel like something is missing in your life, like you don’t fit in or like you’re not accepted.

Sweet girl, I have good news. It’s the gospel. It’s the true story of how Jesus came down from heaven, lived, died and then lived again. He was the perfect sacrifice for us, people who make mistakes.

God created the first humans, Adam and Eve and gave them free choice. They chose to go against God’s wisdom, and against the best plan for their lives. They chose sin, which caused a separation between them and God. No longer could they stand before God blameless, but rather their sins had to be atoned for. They deserved to die.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, sins were atoned for by animal sacrifice. But then God sent down Jesus, who was a part of himself. (Maybe you’ve heard of the trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.) When Jesus died and lived again three days later, it was the perfect sacrifice, atoning for our sins once and for all.

The Bible says that because we are sinners, we deserve death. But God, the Good Father loves you SO much that he sent his own son to die in your place. Romans 5:8 says that “God showed His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Sometimes people have a misconception that because we’ve made bad choices in the past, we are too dirty to come to God. But the truth is… we should bring all of our messiness, our guilt and shame to God and lay it at His feet. We don’t have to clean up first or try to hide our guilt and shame. We can come as we are and he will clean up our life!

All we have to do is show up and accept his grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 says “For by grace you have been saved through faith. It is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not by the result of your works so that no one may boast.”

We could never be good enough, do good enough or clean up enough to earn eternal life.

Romans 10:9 & 13 says “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

You are loved and accepted by God, so much so that he wants to give you freedom and peace in knowing that you’ll have eternal life with Him someday. His grace is a gift of love, waiting to be opened by you.

If you want to hear more about this or check out my personal story of salvation, go back and listen to episode #1.

High school will be more peaceful and hope-filled with God in it. It’s not a magic solution. It doesn’t mean your High School days will be perfect, or even smooth sailing, but you will have peace and freedom and life. You will know that you are deeply loved. And then love and honor and joy will spill out of your mouth, because it’s bubbling out of your heart.

I encourage you to grow in God’s wisdom. The book of Proverbs is a great place to start. If you go to KatieHedrick.com/VIP you can join my email list and each Wednesday, I’ll send you an email with a chapter out of Proverbs.

We’ve covered a lot already! Here’s one last quick tip… the most important stuff, life skills? They won’t teach you those things in High School. Cooking, budgeting, how to change your tire or write a check or start your own business… How to become a great communicator or grow as an individual… you won’t find those things in a High School textbook.

So as we close out, I want to let you know that I’m here to help you make your high school years and beyond, the best that they can be. Meet me on the podcast every Monday or hang out with me on social media so we can keep growing together, in the areas that are most important!

Cheers to a great Freshman year ahead. I’m sending you a great big hug and wishing you all the best, sweet girl!