On Wednesday mornings at 8:30, I drive downtown to a local coffee shop. At each stoplight, college kids swarm with their backpacks on their backs and their phones in their hands as they wait to cross the street. We live in a huge college town, and these kids are a part of our community. They are what make our town what it is, and we've come to love them.
When I get to the coffee shop I take out my Bible and wait for the young, 19-year-old woman I'm meeting. She's a sophomore, a new believer who is on fire for the Word of God. She devours every verse, hungry to learn more about this Savior she now follows.
I have mentored young women, one-on-one, for several years, and each one of them looks different. Not all of them want to talk about the Bible like this young woman. Some want to talk about their dating relationships, friendships, and family. One was engaged, and we talked about all she could expect as a new wife.
My mentoring relationships are never easy. Sometimes a stylish, beautiful young woman with the world ahead of her intimidates me. Sometimes I am frustrated by a young woman who just doesn't get it and who is making choices I know will hurt her. Sometimes I don't know what to say to the young woman who has seen more trauma and heartache in her short life than I have. But I show up anyway. Women need us to just show up.
Mentoring requires me to pay an extra five dollars so I can drop my youngest daughter off at preschool an hour early. It causes me to lose precious time to run errands or going to appointments where I can’t take my children with me. However, even though mentoring is never easy or convenient, and sometimes it is scary and intimidating, it is worth it. As a matter of fact, it is vital to the health of women. And each of my mentoring relationships has brought me more joy than I can express.
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Here are 10 reasons why mentoring is worth it:
Women are desperate for mentors.
When we look at the lifestyles of women from the past, we see that women used to live and work in communities with their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, and friends close-by, even within walking distance. Neighborhoods were smaller. It didn't take twenty minutes to get to someone’s house. Child rearing was collective. There was always someone available to ask for advice or insight.
That has changed. Today women seldom live in the same city or even state as other women in their families. Life is frantic, moving from one activity to the next throughout the day making no time to sit over a cup of coffee and talk to a friend. This change in our culture makes mentoring vital because even though times have changed, women's need for community and support has not. Women still need each other to help them with life’s questions.
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It gives your past trials purpose.
In 2 Corinthians 1:4, Paul teaches us that our afflictions have a purpose: "Who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."
This is one of the primary reasons I mentor young women. I want my past sins, mistakes, and trials to bear fruit beyond my personal life. Whether they are scars from my childhood, poor choices I made in my twenties, or healing from the death of my mom, I want there to be a wide extension of eternal purpose from my experiences.
Several years ago God gave me Genesis 50:20 as my life verse. It states in The Message, "Don’t you see, you planned evil against me but God used those same plans for my good, as you see all around you right now—life for many people." In this passage, Joseph talks to his brothers. However, our enemy is at work planning evil against us at all times. If we cooperate with God, He can use the evil planned, and sometimes accomplished through our lives, to give other people life by learning from our experiences. This is why mentoring is worth it.
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Future generations are strengthened.
Imagine if every woman had an older woman as a mentor and also mentored one younger woman? What would that do for a generation? It would change it forever.
We have all heard of stories where one older woman changed another younger woman's life through her friendship. Decades later the younger woman still recounts her mentor’s wisdom, using it in her life and sharing it with others. Mentoring like this makes women stronger. As women are strengthened, future generations are strengthened as well. Women become better wives, mothers, friends, and workers.
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It only requires showing up.
The other day I was on my way to meet my mentee, and a friend asked, "What do you talk about?" This is the biggest fear people have about mentorship, and it's the biggest reason people don't do it. People are either afraid they won't know what to say or they’re afraid they’ll say the wrong thing.
You do not need a degree in counseling or seminary or anything else to be a mentor. All you need is the commitment to show up, listen, and pray. When I meet with my mentee I tell her to never take my word as the only word. I encourage her to ask other people, read for herself, and study. I assure her that I don't know everything. I just know what I think I understand from my experiences. Being honest like this lowers expectations and makes me human. I’m not a counselor, and I’m not a pastor. My only job is to tell my story and what God has done in my life and listen to her story and what God is doing in her life. All it requires is showing up.
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The personal benefits outweigh the inconvenience.
It is cliché to say “I get as much out of it as she does,” but it’s true. Meeting with that young woman each week keeps me aware of the struggles of a generation that's not my own. It keeps me grounded in present-day life past my life as a wife and mom (which can sometimes be a safe bubble). I learn as much from her as she does from me. It also prepares me to parent my girls when they become young college students.
As I meet with her each week I am challenged to be a woman of integrity. I am challenged to be prayerful and faithful as I ask her to do. I become stronger right alongside her.
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It only requires a short, scheduled amount of time.
Another fear is that mentoring takes a lot of time. None of us has extra time lying around, so it feels like a huge burden. However, this doesn't have to be the case.
The best step to take is to give your scheduled meeting a specific end time. Even if there's no place to go afterward, communicate upfront that you only have a certain amount of time.
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It provides the opportunity for prayer.
Praying for each other is the best way to see God at work in our lives and the lives of others. Mentoring gives us the honor of interceding for other women and watching God work in their lives.
During each of my mentoring sessions, I ask my mentee what she needs prayer for that week. Then, I pray for my mentee before we leave. There might not be anybody else praying for that young girl, but this gives us the opportunity to do so.
I want to encourage you to pray for a young woman you can mentor. I can attest to the fact that young women are starved for older women to come alongside them. They need us to step up, out of our comfort zones, and into the scary, sometimes inconvenient space of mentoring. It's a work with eternal significance.
Brenda Rodgers considers herself a “recovering single” after years as a single woman chasing after marriage instead of chasing after Jesus. Now her passion is to mentor young women to live purposefully and grow in their relationship with God and others. Brenda has been married for five years to a heart transplant hero and is the mom of a toddler girl miracle. She is also the author of the eBook Fall for Him: 25 Challenges from a Recovering Single. You can also read more on Brenda’s blog, www.TripleBraidedLife.com and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
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Originally published Thursday, 14 February 2019.
