Dare to Be Different

by Nicole O'Dell

  Everywhere she went that day, people were saying things like, “Drew is the captain of the cheerleaders—isn’t that fabulous? She’s going to look so cute in the uniform.” Or, “Why didn’t you try out for the squad, Dani? I’m sure you’d have made it like Drew did.” Or, “What are you going to do with all of your time now that Drew will be so busy with practices and games? I’ll bet she’ll make a lot of new friends, too.” Each comment was like a knife through her heart. By the end of the day, all she wanted was to be home, in her room, alone.

  Chapter 4

  SQUEAKY CLEAN

  Two days later, on the bus ride home, Drew was still unrelenting with her annoying chatter about her news. She wanted to talk about her schedule, her uniform, her practices, her leadership goals, her future plans—it was like this one moment, this one thing, had redefined her life.

  “You know, Drew, I seriously think you need to settle down. I’m happy for you and all, but you’re taking it a little too far, don’t you think?” Dani had reached her limit.

  After looking at her for a moment, Drew asked, “What has gotten into you lately? You have been so glum this whole week and you’ve hardly said a word all day.” After Dani remained silent for a few seconds, Drew said, “Ah, I get it. You’re jealous. Don’t forget, I tried to get you to try out, too.”

  “Drew, I’m not jealous … I’m … oh, forget it, you’ll never understand if you haven’t figured it out already.”

  At that moment, the bus pulled up in front of their house and the doors squeaked open to let them off. Once in the house, Drew wanted to finish their talk, so she started to ask Dani more questions, but Dani held up her hand to stop her. “Let’s just let it go for now. I would like to salvage part of this day. We have a couple of hours until youth group tonight, so let’s do something together.”

  “That’s a good idea, but first I have to call Stephanie. She said she has some big news for me. I think Trevor asked her about me or something. When I’m done, we can do our nails or watch TV or something.”

  “Oh never mind, I’ll just do my homework,” Dani answered, not wanting to be second choice to Drew’s other, newer friends.

  “Suit yourself,” Drew replied cheerfully as she grabbed the phone and headed up the stairs to their bedroom. Dani settled on the couch to do her homework and watch some TV. They only had an hour until their mom was due home anyway. They would have dinner and then go to church. Tonight was supposed to be a special night at youth group, and Dani had been looking forward to it. Pastor Steve had cooked up a surprise for them, so she didn’t know what would be happening. She hoped it would be really good; she needed the diversion.

  The minutes ticked by, and it was ten minutes to five before Dani even realized it. Drew was still upstairs on the phone, but Dani was finished with today’s homework and had gotten a start on some that wasn’t due until later in the week.

  Finally, Drew came back downstairs and replaced the phone in its cradle on the wall. “I wonder what Mom’s planning for dinner tonight,” Drew said, looking for clues in the refrigerator. At just that moment, Drew stopped in her tracks when she heard the garage door begin to open. “Oh no.” She gasped. “Stall Mom. I haven’t washed off my makeup yet.” She ran up the stairs to the bathroom where she slammed the door.

  Mom came in, arms laden with grocery bags. “Girls, I could use a hand here,” she called, cheerfully summoning the girls to come help her unload and put away the groceries.

  “I’ll help you, Mom,” Dani offered, immediately getting off the couch.

  “Great, where’s Drew?” Mrs. Daniels asked as Dani started to unpack the plastic grocery bags.

  “Last I heard she was in the bathroom. She should be right down,” Dani answered, being very careful not to lie.

  “How was your day, sweetie?”

  “Oh, it was okay. Nothing special to report from me.…” Dani smiled and held up her hand to fend off what she knew was going to be her Mom’s next question. “And don’t ask. I’m sure Drew’ll want to fill you in about her day herself.” Dani giggled when her mom closed her mouth. It was clear that she was about to ask about Drew’s day, but Dani was tired of talking about her. She hurriedly put away the groceries so she could excuse herself from the kitchen before Drew came down. The last thing she wanted was to have to endure yet another conversation having anything to do with cheerleading.

  “I’m done, Mom. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” She breezed through the doorway just as Drew, freshly scrubbed, came into the kitchen.

  “Hi, Mom. Guess what?”

  Dani hurried up the stairs so that she didn’t have to hear what Drew was about to say.

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Daniels listened to Drew recount the details of her day. Drew was bubbling over with excitement about her newfound popularity.

  “Sweetheart, I’m so proud of you. I think it’s fantastic that you made the team and even better that you were selected to be a leader. What a great honor. Like I’ve been saying, that sort of thing looks wonderful on college applications too. But …”

  “I know, Mom. It’s really exciting,” Drew interrupted. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me. It’s weird doing it without Dani, though. But it’s probably for the best,” Drew explained. “We can’t do everything together forever.”

  “Well, sweetie, just be careful that you don’t leave your sister behind and make her take a backseat to your new interests. She’s your sister; she’s your best friend. She will always be a part of your life. Other friends, teams, interests … they will all come and go. But Dani will be the one person who will always be by your side. Just don’t leave her in your dust as you pursue this new independence that you seem to want so badly.”

  “I’m not being insensitive, am I, Mom? I don’t want to hurt her. I’m really not trying to.”

  “I know you’re not trying to hurt her. But sometimes people get hurt even with the best of intentions. Think back over the past week. Have you even asked her anything about her life or have you just spent the last few days talking about yourself? Show some interest in her, and let her know that you haven’t completely changed and that she is still just as important to you as she was before all of these changes started.”

  “Oh no, Mom …” Drew’s face fell when she remembered. “Dani asked me to do something with her this afternoon and I told her I had to call Stephanie first. I stayed on the phone until just about the time you came home.” Drew left out the part about needing to scrub the makeup off her face before her mom saw her.

  “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. By doing that, Drew, you basically told her that she wasn’t as important as your new friends. I know that you don’t feel that way, but you have to think about how Dani might feel. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Yeah, Mom, I get what you’re saying. I’ll be more careful and try to be more thoughtful.”

  “That’s all you can do, sweetie. Now I’m going to heat up dinner. You girls get ready for church. We need to leave in about forty-five minutes, and your dad should be home in fifteen minutes. So we’ll sneak dinner in before we leave.”

  “Sounds good.” Drew took off up the stairs planning on getting changed for church but also hoping to patch things up with Dani.

  Arriving at church with barely enough time to get to their groups, Mr. and Mrs. Daniels headed off to their adult Bible study class while Dani and Drew went to youth group in the building behind the church. It had once been a parsonage before the church was completely rebuilt and updated. At that time, the old house was given to the youth group and converted into an activity center. It had couches and chairs, a big screen TV for watching movies, some game tables, a foosball table and pool table, as well as a kitchen stocked with basics and cooking equipment. It was a great place to hang out.

  Tonight there was something special going on. The girls had been speculating on the drive over as to what it could be. Drew thought it was probably a pizza party, but Dani didn’t think
that was special enough to warrant all the hush-hush and surprise talk. Dani thought there was probably a special guest due to be there. But she had no idea who it could be.

  With no fanfare or introduction, the doors opened and in walked three players from the Pittsburgh Steelers football team and two of their cheerleaders—all dressed in uniform. Drew was immediately enthralled and stared with her mouth open for at least a full minute. She finally got over her shock and looked at Dani in excitement.

  Dani sat quietly, shaking her head, thinking her day couldn’t possibly get any worse. She had definitely had enough of anything to do with cheerleading for a very long time; and she certainly never expected to have to face it at church, too. But it looked like she was going to have to deal with it for at least another couple of hours.

  One of the players went to the front of the group and introduced himself for those who didn’t know who he was. “Hi, everyone. I’m Shane Sutter. I’m one of the quarterbacks from the Pittsburgh Steelers. You’re all probably wondering why we’re here with you today.” When everyone excitedly acknowledged his introduction and nodded in agreement, Shane continued. “Well, the five of us have a special calling or a special desire, you might say, to work with teens. We have all had very different experiences, but the one thing that we share in common is that our different roads have led us to a point where we realized that we could do nothing without Jesus. Tonight we’d each like to share a little bit about our pasts and how we came to know Jesus, and then we’ll give you guys a chance to ask us questions. We’re pretty informal so just relax, grab a drink or a snack, and let’s get started.”

  No one moved to get a snack. They were all too excited to hear what their celebrities had to say. One by one, the athletes shared their testimonies with the teens. A common thread through the stories was the poor decisions that they made that led to rough patches in their lives. Shane told the story of a time when he was playing football in college and he got the surprise of his life when his girlfriend got pregnant. He recounted the fears and doubts of sticking by her side through the pregnancy and then the agonizing reality of giving the baby up for adoption.

  “One thing I learned through that whole experience, something I still carry with me today, is that my choices are never just about me. Other lives are affected by what I do. I have to be willing to live with seeing the people I love hurt by my mistakes, or I need to make a different choice. The girl I was dating during all of that, well, her life was turned upside down. She was in her first year of college, and she was basically alone and had to go through a pregnancy, a birth, and then she had to let go of that baby. She will never, ever be the same. Also, think about that baby. That baby is a human being and deserved two loving parents. We believe that she got that, but the heartache of knowing she was given up for adoption will affect her one day. Our parents were also gravely affected. They had to grieve the loss of a grandchild they would never know.

  “I had believed,” Shane continued, “that my choices were just that—mine. I felt that people should stay out of my life and let me make my decisions and my mistakes if I wanted to. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. My personal and most private decisions affected everyone I cared about. The hardest part of facing my consequences was watching the people I loved suffer. And there was nothing I could do about it … it was too late.”

  Finishing up his testimony, Shane turned it over to Jodie, one of the cheerleaders. She shared a much different experience. “I was in high school, a junior at the time, and I wanted to date a boy who was a junior in college. My parents forbade me to see him because he was too old and there was something about him they just didn’t like, but they couldn’t quite identify what it was. I thought that they were just being judgmental and were wrong, so I sneaked around and dated him anyway. To make a very long story short, one night he slipped something into my cola; and when I became affected by the drug, he raped me.

  “My parents had been right; but they couldn’t convince me, so I ignored them. In retrospect I wonder just who I thought I was. I mean, what arrogance I must have had to think that I knew more than them. If only I had just heeded their warning and obeyed their wishes, I would have avoided a lifetime of pain. I suffered tremendous loss, years of anguish, and it took years of counseling before I felt somewhat whole again. It wasn’t until I found the Lord that I really began to love myself again and feel restored to a level of innocence that had been stripped from me.

  “The main thing that I’d like for you to take from my story is that you are all just like me. You think you know so much and that your parents are old-fashioned, right? Don’t buy into that lie from the enemy. He wants you to believe that you know better, because when you question your parents and doubt their word and are willing to disobey them, that’s when he can sneak in and get control of your life. Who do you want to be in control of your life? Choose God, and then let Him work through your parents to lead you down the right road.”

  They continued on with the testimonies, and when they had about thirty minutes left in the evening, Shane stood up again and said, “We’re going to try something a little different. We’d like to separate into two groups. The boys will come with me and the other players outside, and the girls will stay here with Jodie and Becky. We thought that it might give you all a little more freedom to talk about the things that really matter most to you and also to give us the opportunity to address issues that pertain to girls and boys separately. How does that sound?”

  With a chorus of agreement, the students began to shuffle positions—the boys went outside and the girls arranged their seating so that they were a little more comfortable and their circle a little tighter.

  Jodie started off the question-and-answer time by saying, “Do any of you have a topic or a question that you’d like to ask us?”

  Dani raised her hand. “I have a question. It’s really a two-parter, if that’s okay.” When they nodded and said it was fine, she continued. “Were you both on the cheerleading squad and really popular in high school? And if so, do you think the popularity influenced you in making poor decisions?”

  “Great question. Do you want to answer that, Becky?”

  “Yeah, for me it was definitely a factor. I loved my position on the squad, and it did help me become very popular in school. In that role, I made some bad choices so that I would look cool and keep my ‘popular status.’ I was a leader in both the good things and in the bad things.”

  “Same for me,” Jodie said. “I wanted to be popular, and cheerleading helped me get there; but it took a lot of dumb decisions and mistakes to keep me there. I just wish I had known that the people who wanted me to behave that way weren’t really my friends. If I had really understood that, it may have made it easier to say no to some things.”

  “How about some other questions?”

  “I have one.” A new girl named Megan raised her hand. “My boyfriend has been pressuring me to go further with him physically than I feel comfortable going. What do you think I should do?”

  “Honestly,” Jodie said, “I think you should find a new boyfriend. If you are with someone who is pressuring you to do anything at all, then he doesn’t really, truly care about you. He’s only interested in how you can benefit him. If he really cared about you, he would care about what you’re ready for or not ready for. Plus, if you have a spiritual foundation and you’re trying to follow God’s will, wouldn’t you want someone who supported that and wanted the same thing?”

  “But,” Megan asked, “aren’t all boys like that? I mean, are there any who wouldn’t put the pressure on?”

  “Of course there are. There are boys here in this meeting tonight who are worried about protecting their own purity. Those are the kinds of boys you want to be with.”

  “So, maybe where I meet them is part of the problem?” Megan was looking for clarification, and all of the other girls were hanging on Jodie’s words.

  “Well, you can meet a good boy at school and a bad seed at c
hurch. The location isn’t a guarantee, but it sure is a good start. But girls, let’s consider something else entirely. What if you didn’t have a boyfriend at all right now? You know, God has a perfect plan for your life. He set aside this period of growing up to be the time when He shapes you into the confident, secure, and godly woman that He wants you to be. That process is so much more difficult if you’re already trying to act like an adult and have adult relationships. I mean, do you really think that you will meet and date a boy now who will become your husband later? If you don’t think so, then what’s the point of dating now? You’re only opening yourself up for hardship and pain.” Jodie paused and looked around the group, making eye contact with as many girls as possible.

  “If I sound opinionated on this subject, it’s because I am. I only wish someone could have gotten through to me when I was your age. I wish I had spent less time acting like a grownup and more time actually growing up. I let my identity be shaped by whether or not boys liked me. I forgot that I am perfect and beautiful in God’s eyes already. Don’t make the same mistake I did, okay?”

  They continued talking until it was time to go home. When it was over, Drew and Dani picked up their purses and started to head for the door. “Hang on a second, Dani. I want to talk to Jodie privately.” Drew ran over to Jodie and told her that she was fantastic.

  Jodie said, “You have that look in your eye, Drew. The same look I had when I was your age. I just hope you remember some of the things we said tonight. Here, take my e-mail address. If you ever find that you’re in need of someone to talk to, shoot me a note. Okay?”

  “Thanks so much. I really appreciate you guys coming here and doing this. It was awesome.” They briefly hugged, and then Drew was on her way to find her family. She was much more excited about having had the chance to meet real cheerleaders than she was about anything they had said. She put Jodie’s e-mail address in her wallet in a safe place, just in case she needed it sometime.