This is a topic I've been discussing on the side with Amy. (Side meaning email, since she's several states away.)
She has recently found someone she'd love to have mentor her. I told her of my longing for the same. Somehow, being 42, I feel I shouldn't need a mentor, but something tells me that's the devil talking. Pride will keep you distanced from people. There have been godly, older women in my life, but I feel I am always the one initiating, and it's usually when I have a serious problem. And by serious, I don't mean a broken oven or I'm out of gas on the beltway. (For those I'd call my hubby, anyway.) When you're always initiating, you can begin to feel like a nag or a burden.
I have close friends who are intuitive, insightful, and interested. But the "i" word "initiative" is severely lacking. Why is that? Am I unapproachable? Do I come across as more "together" than I am, or "too far gone"? Do people assume that my age and my "avid Christianity" (as my aunt puts it) make me an unlikely candidate for a mentor?
Just opening this up for dialogue. Do you have a mentor? If so, how did it happen, and how often do you talk with her? If not, why not? I don't want to hear "busy lives" because I think that is a socially acceptable excuse. Call me harsh on that one, but I have felt very shoved aside by the "busyness" of other women. I was busy with three young kids under the age of five once upon a time, but ladies in our church were always in and out of each other's homes. Two of them took me under their wings. One is still my good friend, the other is a New Ager, but her counsel was good at the time! (She had a husband who talked to her worse than you'd talk to dogs, but she always spoke well of him.)
I am in a different season now, but in some ways it's more difficult. Three of our four kids are nearly grown and I don't know what I'm doing. Where are the women who have transitioned from Mommy to Mom to Friend Called Mom? Where are the grandmothers who have been there/done that, and will initiate a relationship with younger women?
Or is it the responsibility of the younger woman? Initiative is one of the characteristics I highly value, so when I see a problem or an opportunity, I like to initiate. Are there other people, women my senior, who are just chompin' at the dentures--I mean bit-- (how I loathe cliches!) to share their wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, from everything from pickling cucumbers to parenting older teens, to preparing a will?
What say ye?
7 comments:
Good questions, Zoanna. Ted just told me last night I should find a mentor locally that I can go to with mothering questions, etc. So that's something I'm going to be praying about -- not whether I should have one, but who to approach. I really do think they're important. Did you read the Ungrind article we had on mentors? If not, it's on the October page.
I just read about having a mentor in "Shopping for Time." Great book by the way. A quote from the book states, "We ought to aggressively seek out other women to help us grow in the admirable qualities of biblical femininity. . . . Young women, we should ask ourselves: 'Do I have a friend from whom I am learning some aspect of biblical womanhood?' And older women, we should consider: 'Am I faithfully imparting biblical womanhood to at least one friend?"
My mom is my mentor. She's who I go to first with questions about pregnancy, children, caring for my home, etc. Outside of my mom, I don't really have another mentor right now. I have before. During my Beachmont years, Maureen T. was.
You beat me to it!
I’ve had two absolutely fabulous mentors in the recent past. One was assigned to me as a complete stranger; the other I pursued. Both have had a HUGE impact on me!
I have also had the privilege of mentoring a few younger girls, formally and informally. I did the initiating when I sensed there might be some interest on their part. I still am very close with two of them and they have challenged and encouraged me as much or more then I ever invested in them (in fact I just blogged about one of them recently here).
In this season of my life I am longing for an in-person mentor more than ever. As you know, after two years of prayer to that end, God is providing an answer and I hope to start meeting with a new mentor next week! That opportunity opened up partly by my initiative and partly by hers. I invited her to lunch and then ended up starting a general conversation about mentoring; she initiated the possibility of a continuing relationship by saying something like, “If you ever think you could learn something from me…” and I jumped all over it :)
I also plan to begin mentoring a high school girl from my church soon. Can you tell mentoring is a HUGE passion of mine? :) I took the initiative with her but left the door wide open for her to say “no thanks” without my being offended, but she said she was very interested.
I think it’s the older woman’s responsibility to initiate. Here’s a quote from Mark Dever’s study of Titus in The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept:
“Younger woman, learn from an older woman so that the loveliness of the fruit of the gospel will be manifest for all to see. If the older women will not take the initiative with you, then risk embarrassing them, go up to them, and ask them to teach you. If they will not initiate fulfilling their biblical responsibilities to you, then, like a child who asks the delinquent parent for some food, risk their love for you, take the initiative, and ask them to fulfill their responsibility.”
So what stops the older women from initiating? “Busy” excuses, like you mentioned? Fear of (wo)man (what if she doesn’t like me/doesn’t respect me/doesn’t want to meet with me)? Lack of confidence in her own walk with the Lord? Intimidation—either because the younger women seem to have it together, or because the older women have the impression that mentoring is something you can only do once you’ve “arrived” (as if we ever arrive this side of heaven)? I hope you have "older women" reading along that will weigh in!
Someone once proposed to me that “maybe older women don’t speak up enough because somebody shut them up by a know-it-all attitude before you knew them.” I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes sense. I can see how older women would be frustrated and give up if in the past they had offered advice and it wasn’t received well. That’s a good attitude-check for me--do I display humility and a teachable heart to hear and consider what those older and wiser than me have to say? Or am I defensive of my choices and over-confident?
To me,mentoring isn't super-formal theology training. It’s coming alongside another woman and sharing with her what you have learned through the Word and your experiences of walking with the Lord--encouragement, prayer, accountability, practical advice, that sort of thing. If you are growing in Him, you have something to share with someone who isn’t quite as far along as you. Ideally, I want to be mentored by someone I really admire--someone who is exemplifying the kind of qualities I hope to possess. But if I’m humble, I can learn from anyone. A mentor certainly doesn’t have to be perfect; we can learn as well or better from others’ mistakes and failures, not just their successes.
Anyway, I guess it doesn’t do anybody any good to sit around saying, “THEY should be initiating.” Personally, I think a formal mentoring ministry can go a long way in solving some of these problems. Rather than everyone sitting around thinking someone else should be doing the initiating, you have everyone who’s interested get together, and go through a process of matching them up (I did this with a group of about 20 women in our college chorale, based on materials I’d gotten from my first mentor, who did this at her church several times). Some people feel funny about being matched with someone they don’t know well, or about “humans” doing the matching…but don’t tell me God can’t work through that and doesn’t, in His sovereignty, ordain the matches. My best mentoring experience ever was someone who didn’t know me personally matching me with someone I had never met!
That’s not to say the matches will be 100 percent successful…but even if some of the matches don’t “click,” what have you really lost at the end? As I said earlier, with a humble attitude you can learn from anyone, and at the very least you got to know another woman better and now know how to pray for her at a deeper level and have established a connection with someone in your church family.
That said, I tried to help get a mentoring ministry underway at our church about a year and a half ago…it started off looking very promising and then totally fizzled, for some reasons I do not fully understand. Unfortunately our church also suffers from a lack of wise older women.
We’ve got an abundance of young women (20s) who desperately want mentors. An abundance of women in their 30s and a few in their 40s who would have lots to pass along to the women my age, but who have, at least from my perspective, been intimidated into thinking mentoring is something you have to have “arrived” to do. And they also want mentors. Then you’ve got about three older (50s-60s) women who actually stepped up and said they could/would be mentors. Now that’s not to say other informal mentoring relationships don’t already exist in the church besides the women who expressed an interest in this ministry…but still, you do the math. It’s discouraging.
Well, I’m rambling; this LONG ago surpassed appropriate comment length, so I better take it over to my own blog. I’ve been meaning to do that anyway. Sorry to be so ridiculouly verbose here.
(Oh, and to answer your question…I definitely don’t think 42 is “too old for a mentor”—I think that’s a perfect middle age to be passing along what you know to the younger generation, like your daughter--or me, long distance! :) --and yet leaves plenty of room for you to learn from women who have been where you are and can share what they learned. And, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want someone else to do the initiating, at least sometimes, if for no other reason than to reassure you that they want to meet with you and don’t find you burdensome/annoying. I know I like to be pursued instead of always being the one doing the pursuing.)
WHEW! Now I'm really done. Sorry.
OY. That's so long I'm sure no one will want to read it. Sometimes I can't help myself. :P
Ha, that was officially the longest comment I think I've ever seen. But, I read the whole thing and loved it. :)
This is good for me (and, I hope, others) to read. Seems like a common theme here right now, considering Ted JUST asked/told AMy to find a mentor, Danielle has JUST been reading about it, and Amy has JUST found one in answer to a longing. God is up to something, and that's exciting. I have never been formally mentored, but am not opposed to being matched with someone, although I think I could keep on with the friend I have, but be more proactive.
Amy, don't worry about the length of your comment--ever! I appreciate your thoughtful response to every question. Our church had a ladies meeting a long time ago when mentoring was mentioned/suggested/encouraged, but it never took off, but I have hope it will become more of an emphasis. We have godly women , plenty of whom are older than me, but they aren't getting any younger, if ya know what I mean. Nor am I!
Also, something I learned from a message done at our church was that 'older' doesnt exactly mean age. It's just someone who has more wisdom and life experience then yourself. And while most of the time they will be older then you, it doesn't always happen that way.
Just something I thought I'd share =)
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