I spoke the other day at a Mentorship Banquet for my grandfather's church. It was a lovely time with some incredibly kind and beautiful women. They asked me to share about mentorship. I am posting what I shared because I want to have it available for the amazing family and friends in my life who have served as mentors to me. I mention a lot of you by name. And due to time constraints, I could not mention everybody or talk in detail about everybody to the extent that I would have loved to. But please know, that I value and appreciate EVERY woman and friend in my life. In recognition of Mother's Day and all of you who have changed my life, I'm sharing my heart about mentorship. This is long, so no pressure at all to read it. And I'm not posting it because I think it's that special. I'm just posting it so that you all know that I cherish your wisdom and guidance. Love to all the girls in my life!
May 7, 2011: Good Shepherd Mother Daughter Banquet
Things I Learned From My Mother… and Other Great Women.
Introduction:
My name is Julie Vicena. Some of you might know me as I grew up in Sidney, OH. My parents are Eric and Lynda Newman and my grandpa, Bob Smith, attends this church. I am a mom to three beautiful children, ages 6 and under. Seth just turned 6 last month and is our energetic and imaginative one who loves to tell stories and spread his joy to everyone he meets. He will likely tell you about his invisible pet Lizard and then be paged away to handle an emergency at the hospital like his daddy. Lilah is four years old and lives in a transient state between ballerinas, Fancy Nancy and princesses. When I honestly admitted to her that the likelihood of her actually becoming a princess when she grows up is really quite low, she decided to focus her energy on becoming a ballet teacher with a pink ballet studio and a princess themed house, complete with princess computer. However, then Lilah watched the Royal Wedding last week and decided I didn’t know what I was talking about. She wants to be a princess again. Isaac is two years old. Period. There’s not a whole lot else to say about that. He has recently bought into the Toy Story 3 world of Buzz Lightyear and Woody and is rarely found without his Buzz wings strapped to his back, and his Buzz Pez dispenser in his hand. Isaac is now and has always been my most active and, dare I say, challenging child. He has added a new dimension to the concept of “staying one step ahead” of your kids. I often fail at this and clean up the mess later. The biggest challenge with Isaac currently is that he is not containable. This is a problem when I have to do things like take a shower or go to the bathroom. He is able to climb over our 5-foot tall, vertically barred, metal gate. He is able to build fairly advanced climbing structures to reach absolutely anything of the sugar variety in our kitchen. We have not yet found a lock that successfully stumps him. In addition to my own three children, I care for my cousin’s 2-year-old son during the week as well. My cousin and her little guy are currently living with us, so Hunter just joins in the chaos and makes my kid count 4. I often say that I am married to the most wonderful man in the world and we will be celebrating our ten-year wedding anniversary on May 19. Josh is a very busy surgical resident with Detroit Medical Center in Michigan. He is in his 4th year of residency and will be finishing his training in 15 months. We do not know yet what the next phase of life will bring. We are praying and asking God to guide us in job decisions as we look for the right practice to join and try to find our place in ministry in the next community we move to.
Motherhood:
Linda asked me to speak today with the theme of mentorship and legacy among women. I started thinking about these topics as I prayed about what to share with you all and frankly, I had a difficult time narrowing it all down. The truth is, these happen to be topics I’m rather passionate about. And I think it is actually a subject matter that has a lot of facets that we don’t always think about as we live our everyday lives. So, I am going to attempt to connect all the pieces here that I think are important concerning mentorship and passing down legacies of excellence as women.
When I think of mentorship, I have to admit that the first thought that pops into my head is my mother. I think this is a fairly natural response for most of us. Our mothers are, after all, supposed to teach us how to be women. Some of our moms did a great job at this; some might have had a few areas where they missed the mark. But good or bad, it is still our mothers who we generally watch for firsthand experience on how to go from being girls to women. Now if you think about it, this means there is a huge responsibility on us mothers, not just to “take care” of our children, but also to pass down our knowledge, wisdom, and guidance in a way that will stick with the next generation so that they can rely on it as they move into adulthood. There is a song written and performed by an artist named John Mayer that talks about this responsibility in a way that I think is powerful. The chorus says,
“Fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too”
Now in talking about my own mother, I have to admit that I often consider myself one of the luckiest little girls alive because I have a mother who should get the gold medal if there were an “Olympics of mentoring your daughters.” So I began thinking about all the things I learned from my mother. I made a list because I think it will be valuable for me to have all of it written down in case I ever start to forget.
1. How to separate an egg yolk from the whites
2. How to frost a cake
3. How to crimp a pie crust
4. How to REALLY clean a bathroom in a house of all boys
5. How to get a nasty stain out of an important piece of clothing
6. How to clean your house from top to bottom in under one hour flat when you have 50 people showing up for Bible study
7. How to turn a meal designed for 6 into a meal for 20 with zero notice because your kids just invited their 12 closest friends over for dinner
8. How to sleep and feed 15 missionaries for a week with 15 minutes notice
9. How to do all of the above with a smile on your face and act as though it is no big deal
10. How to accurately tweeze my eyebrows
11. How to properly apply makeup so you don’t look like a clown (Side note: my mom brought Linda over for that Mary Kay lesson)
12. My mom taught me that sitting to cuddle and read books with your kids is more important than having clean socks to wear. I struggle with this one still because I’m kind of a neat freak.
13. She taught me how to pray
14. She taught me the importance of spending time with God every day. She did this by example when I would see her sitting in the living room with her open Bible every morning when I would get up for school.
15. She taught me to keep my mouth shut when necessary (this has also taken some time for me) and to keep people’s confidences whether they ask me to or not.
16. My mom taught me that it was better to focus on the big things and not the little things because focusing on the little things too much could crush the spirit and prevent its ability to listen when it was time to address the big things. And so she let Daniel duct tape his shoes and book bag together and she let Ben shave his head on a dare and she let me dye my hair every color under the rainbow. And then when it was time to talk about the big stuff, our independent spirits had ears to listen and became teachable.
17. I learned from my mother that a mild concussion is not a super huge deal and that boys are crazy and they need to do crazy things (within reason) in order to feel like men. This is a valuable lesson for me now because I have 2 boys of my own who might want to bungee jump off of a bunk bed or ride their bikes off of a dock into the lake. I now know how to put appropriate safety measures in place to accommodate my sons’ adventurous spirits.
18. I learned from my mother how to carry myself like a lady; how to be graceful and intelligent and kind.
19. I learned how to serve others because I watched my mother do it beautifully my whole life.
20. My mom taught me how to make the best fruit pizza and follow a recipe well. I can now reduce a sauce and even follow Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking, much to everyone’s surprise.
21. My mom showed me how to listen to and understand the heart of my children by doing it for me my whole life. She taught me to respond more to their heart than their actions. I hope this will draw my children to me the way it drew me to her, even in my teenage years.
22. I learned to fear the Lord in a way that produces wisdom, the kind of wisdom that saves your life and the lives of your children.
23. I learned to honor my husband and respect him because I watched my mom honor and obey my dad every day of my life.
24. I learned to pray fervently for my children and have even started praying for their future spouses because I know my mom did it for us.
25. I learned from my mother that the most important thing I can do with my children now is to fill them up with the Word of God so that their hearts will overflow with His promises even when they are adults.
Truly, I cannot even possibly list all the things I have learned from my mother. Sometimes I think I will sit down and write it all in a book at length so that I can pass it down to my children. But for today, I have given you a just a few of the highlights. The lessons you have learned from your mothers might be different. All are valuable. And I am working now to pass these lessons down to my own children, and especially my daughter, at the right moments. Of course, the most important means of teaching is by living.
1 Timothy 4:16 (New International Version, ©2011)
16 “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”
And I think that is perhaps the MOST valuable lesson I learned from my mother to date… to LIVE my faith and my life in a way that is authentic. My words MUST line up with my actions. How many of us know that kids are experts at noticing discrepancies? I tell my kids to show the fruit of the spirit of patience, but if I’m yelling it at them because they have used up all of my own patience, it’s a bit of a hypocrisy. That happens to be the area I find myself working on the most, by the way. (For those of you who want to know my current biggest failure as mentoring goes)
Mothers are important indeed. They pass their knowledge and wisdom and genetics down from generation to generation. So that begs the question. Where did my own mother, who I revere and respect so much, get all of her wisdom? Lets talk about legacy for a moment.
Legacy - anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor.
Anything handed down… those in our family hand down things to us, all kinds of things. Some things are valuable, some are more sentimental. When my grandma Shirley died a few years ago, my grandpa let me go through her jewelry box. She didn’t have much of monetary value. Most of her jewelry was inexpensive costume jewelry. But I took a lot of it and I love it. I wear it and I think of her. It brings back my memory of her, and that is priceless. My grandmother could sew. I mean she could really sew. And she made lots of beautiful pieces for me and others in my family. After she died, I boxed up those items that she made that I could not really use, and I saved them. They were her handiwork. And sewing was one of her extraordinary gifts that she used to minister to those around her. My biggest memory of her was sitting behind a sewing machine. These items have become a part of her legacy. They will be handed down to the generations after her. But as special as these items are, they gain their value because of WHO my grandmother was. And it is THAT legacy that she shared that has been passed to my mother, and is being passed to me, and I will pass it to my daughter. My daughter, Lilah, will have the blessing of coming from 3 generations of women who loved the Lord and who lived in a way that allowed a heritage of example and wisdom to be passed to her. That spiritual legacy will be more powerful and valuable for her than any piece of jewelry or crystal bowl we could share. I have a great mother because she had a great mother. The course of my life was set in motion largely because of the decisions my mother and grandmother made in their own lives. And I pray the same will be said for my Lilah. Some of you knew my grandma Shirley. She attended church here and my grandpa Bob still does. Grandma was a dichotomy of two people, both of which are important to learn from. My grandma Shirley never missed a recital or important performance or a birthday or any other special moment in my life. I always knew that when she would see me she would wrap her arms around me in a huge bear hug, rock me back and forth, and pat my bottom. It did not matter how old I was. She would cup my face in her hands and tell me everything she thought was fantastic about me. She was an encourager. When I had my first baby, I had to appear as a bridesmaid in my sister-in-law’s wedding 5 weeks after I gave birth. Grandma Shirley drove 12 hours each way to Tulsa, OK the week before the wedding to literally sew me into my bridesmaid dress because my body was changing so dramatically from day to day at that time. She was a soft, loving, and generous woman. Her spanker when we were kids was a fly swatter wrapped in padding and lace that said “grandma’s swatter.” On the flip side, she was also tough. She could work tirelessly for weeks to rebuild a wedding dress that needed to go from a size 10 to a size 2 and recreate bridesmaid dresses a day before the wedding. She worked as a house parent to 18 troubled teenage girls for over 20 years in a correctional facility. If that’s not tough, I don’t know what is. After she finished raising her own children, she went to work nurturing other people’s who desperately needed a positive female role model. My grandma literally spent her golden years mentoring hundreds of young women who were not exactly happy to be where they were at the time. And when my grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 53, she attacked it with gusto and did whatever she needed to do to “be around to see her grandbabies grow up.” She put her body through hell and she won. She spent the following 17 years participating fully in all the things God had called her to. And when she was diagnosed with uterine cancer at age 70, she handled it with all the grace and strength she was known for. Her last words to me before she lost her battle with cancer were “You take care of that boy” as she pointed to my 9 month old Seth. And I think of her often and those words often as I strive to take care of my children the way she told me to and the way she took care to pass her legacy of strength, love, and grace down to my mom, and then me. Legacy. It is something we live every day and then it pours over our children like a rich oil that soaks into the skin and is difficult to wash away. The question for all of us is this: what will your legacy be? The legacy poured over me by my grandmother and mother has been priceless and nurturing. But a legacy will soak in to our children whether it is a rich and beautiful one, or a harmful one full of inconsistencies and pain. I cherish the lessons and example the women in my life have poured down to me and I pray every day that I will share that legacy with my daughter and her daughter. To wrap up this point, I want to share a scripture that I think expresses it eloquently.
Ecclesiastes 7:11-12 (New International Version, ©2011)
11 Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing and benefits those who see the sun.
12 Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.
Older Women to Younger Women:
I think it is easy to think of mentorship in terms of mother daughter relationships. It is super important and ultimately I think really does play the largest role in our development as women. However, there are certainly other forms of mentorship that I want to discuss because I think they are also very important.
Titus 2:3-5
“Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”
Ladies, some of us had awesome moms and generations of amazing women in our lives. But some of us didn’t. And even if we did, there is still a Biblical role for older women to take in younger women’s lives who are not necessarily their children. We NEED the experienced women in the world to take us inexperienced women under their wings. Now, let me clarify what this looks like. It is NOT being bossy and snarky about all the things us youngens are doing wrong. That kind of stuff is discouraging and makes younger women avoid the “wisdom” of the older generation. I want to give two examples from my own life and let you see the difference in mentorship styles. I will let you guess as to which one I responded to.
A couple of months ago I took my three youngest kiddos to the library. The children’s area was downstairs on a basement style first floor. The space was huge with play areas all spread out and bookshelves filling the space, which makes keeping a constant eye on short little two year olds a near impossibility. The toddler play area was in a corner near the elevator. The two little boys were playing in the toddler area and I turned around to help my daughter with something on the computer game she was playing. A second later I hear over the loud speaker, “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a little boy, about 2 years old, with brown hair and a white shirt that says GAP on the front, running around upstairs. If this is your child, please come upstairs and retrieve him immediately.” This was Isaac. My friend who was with me stayed downstairs with the other kids and I ran upstairs to find Isaac. I found him cornered in the back of the library by two older women. He was running away from them and would not go to either of them. I apologized for the incident and collected my child. The women looked at me with judgment in their eyes and said, “You know, you really should watch your children. He could have gone out the front door and been hurt, or anything could have happened.” I politely agreed and explained that I had 3 children ages 4 and under downstairs and he simply got away. Needless to say, their advice was not well received. I know I have to watch my kids. I WAS watching my kids. They put an elevator with only one button right next to the toddler play area. That’s a recipe for disaster when you have an escape artist like Isaac. And frankly, I would dare any mother of any age to tell me that they never once had a child get away from them. If either of those women had offered an iota of understanding and empathy for what a challenge it can be to be a young mom with 4 small children, I would have been significantly more open to their words. Instead, I walked away feeling judged and chastised, rather than encouraged.
Now for my other example. I attended a leadership conference for a ministry I am involved with for medical wives. I was by far one of the youngest women in the room for the whole weekend. This could have been an opportunity for the older, more experienced women to lord their experiences over us. However, we were met with great respect and care. The women valued our ideas and when we discussed our concerns and challenges as young wives with husbands in medical training, they prayed for us and encouraged us and shared their own challenges from years ago with us and then they shared how they had been victorious in their challenges. We learned from them and they taught us with love, joy, peace, and grace.
I know which kind of older woman I want to be. I want to be the one who uplifts and encourages the younger generation. I want to be the one who teaches them with love and respect and prays for them.
As a matter of fact, it was in a situation similar to my library incident that my grandma Shirley was able to pass down one of her greatest words of wisdom to my mother. I’m thankful for this particular word because as my mom lives it out, my life is blessed and easier. It was Thanksgiving dinner nearly 30 years ago. My parents attended Thanksgiving with my dad’s side of the family. My brother, Ben was one year old. The meal was running way late and Ben was hungry and way past his naptime. He was losing it. My mom was desperately trying to keep him calm and hold him off until dinnertime, but he finally went into a full melt down out of hunger and exhaustion. One of the older female relatives responded by saying, “You know, children just didn’t act like that when my kids were little.” To which another older female relative replied, “No, they did not.” My mom took Ben upstairs to a bedroom to try to calm him and get him to sleep. She called my grandma in tears. She said my grandmother’s words gave her peace and then stuck with her for the rest of her life. Grandma Shirley said, “Oh honey, of course their children acted like that. ALL children act like that at one time or another. They have just forgotten. Don’t ever forget these moments. Someday, there will be another young mom whose kids are acting like that and she’ll need encouragement. Just don’t forget. Most older women have simply forgotten.” My mom said she never forgot grandma’s words… or those moments. And now when my children act “like that”, Nina swoops in to the rescue rather than condemnation. And I’ll tell you what; it makes me want to come home more. My sister-in-law, Sarah, and I were having a conversation about this a few weeks ago. Obviously, there is always adjustment when you marry into another family and you are learning what is acceptable and what is not. There is no greater area of stress than having children when it comes to this issue. Sarah was telling me how reassuring it is to come home and not really have to stress during visits with my parents. She said there was a day when her second child, Olivia, was not quite 2 years old and she had eaten a chocolate candy. Olivia then walked over to my mom’s white, chaise lounge couch and wiped her chocolaty, brown mouth all over the cushion. Sarah’s heart leapt into her throat as she looked, horrified, at her mother-in-law. She said she would never forget the moment when my mom smiled and said, “Oh, chocolate kisses!” I know I felt the same way when Seth “helped” to clean my dad’s plasma screen TV with a soft scrub soaked bathtub brush, and my parents simply said, “Oh my, what a helper we have.” Do not underestimate the impact these moments have made on Sarah and me, as young moms. We won’t forget those moments of grace and leadership. They revealed to us how to prioritize what is important in life. They provided a physical example of how we will choose to treat the young women in the future because we know how much it meant to us to be afforded grace and peace in those moments where our children had done something terrible. During the same conversation, Sarah told me about a visit in the summertime where the kids were playing with water guns in my parents’ hot tub. She said my mom had just gotten dressed and put on her makeup and fixed her hair. She came outside to visit with a fresh cup of coffee in her hand. As soon as she walked out of the house, my nephew, Owen, greeted his Nana with a blast of water from the barrel of his water gun. Sarah, again, sat horrified as she awaited her mother-in-law’s response and prepared to apologize profusely. Sarah shared with me that she would never forget what my mother did next. My mom put her coffee down with a gleam in her eye, reached her fully clothed arm down to bottom of the hot tub to retrieve a spare water gun, and proceeded to win a full-on water gun war with her grandchildren. What might have seemed like nothing more than a silly summer day with grandkids became a teachable moment for the younger generation. Sarah and I marveled at the response of grace and joy. We made conscious decisions in that moment to live our lives with joy and to create wildly fun memories with those we love, even if it means we have to change our clothes and reapply our makeup. My mom did not stop mentoring when her children left the house. She just mentors us in different ways now. But we’re still watching and we’re still learning through her example about how to be women who bestow peace and joy on those around them.
Which kind of mentor are you? Because here’s the thing: you are always mentoring. People are always watching. The question is not whether you are mentoring. The question is how you are doing it? I crave the guidance of women more experienced than me. I find their insight to be like a refreshing rain on my soul that nurtures the growth within me. But it is only refreshing when it is filled with Christ’s love and not harsh judgment for my immaturities.
Proverbs 16:24
“Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”
Friendship:
I think that the mentor relationship between mothers and daughters and older women to younger women is the box in which most of us place mentorship. However, I believe there is another form of mentorship that is very important and that is the mentorship that happens between peers or friends. Women are relational beings. We HAVE to connect with people; it’s the way we are wired. Consequently, I believe that God has given us the ministry of mentorship. We minister to those around us largely through relationships. Sometimes it happens through an intentional mentor relationship that we seek out. But often, it happens between friends just hanging out. There are different levels of intimacy in friendship, but there is something to be gleaned from your friends and peers and even acquaintances if you are open to it.
The first kind of friendship that I want to talk about is the most intimate kind. We read about the friendship between David and Jonathan in the Bible and see a deep and passionate love. The kind that “sticks closer than a brother.”
1 Samuel 20:17 (New International Version, ©2011)
17 And Jonathan had David reaffirm his oath out of love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.
We also study about the relationship between Ruth and Naomi. Naomi was older and certainly served as a mentor to Ruth. She was her mother-in-law, but she was also her friend. And Ruth stayed with her, ever faithful and respectful. They loved each other and they sacrificed for one another.
Ruth 1:16 (New International Version, ©2011)
16 But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
These are Biblical examples of the kind of friendships that we all should have and hopefully do have. We NEED friendship that is deep and intimate and that challenges us toward growth.
Proverbs 27:17 (New International Version, ©2011)
17 As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
I have been blessed with some incredible friends. I have precious friends from high school who I still keep in touch with and learn from. I have a solid group of girlfriends from college who I still reunite with each year and keep in touch with through Facebook and our group blog. And God has blessed me with friendships with some incredible women I have met during our years in medical training. Specifically, I have my “Jonathan friend” or my “Ruth friend”. As a lucky coincidence, her name happens to be Ruth. Ruth and I have been friends since junior high. In high school we committed to be each other’s accountability partners so we met regularly to discuss scripture and talk about what God was doing in our lives, and we prayed for each other. We moved on and went to different colleges in different states and lived apart for many years. We kept in touch and maintained our bond. I will never forget the day she told me her parents were making her move 3 hours North during my senior year of high school. We were at a school camping retreat and we sat in the lodge weeping as we held each other. It was like being separated from a twin. After 8 years of education in Oklahoma, my husband and I moved back to the Ohio and Michigan region. Ruth and I still get together for frequent visits and even have regular slumber parties. Of course, our children are often with us and so there is very little sleeping that happens and the chaos level is beyond reason. We once bravely got together with our other dear friend, Beka, for 3 days with all of our 8 children at the time (that number has grown a bit since then). By the third day the kids had driven us to the brink of insanity. So we gated all of them into the living room with toys and a movie. We threw sippy cups and a box of Cheerios over the gate and let the kids have a free for all. We took our cups of coffee to the room across from the gate where we could monitor the children but not be disrupted by them as easily. We sat and sipped our coffee, chatting happily, while our children organized a mutiny and Ruth’s oldest stood on the coffee table announcing that it was time for a meeting because it is “Your job to take care of us!” There are not a lot of friends you can do that with. I have a few of them. And they are priceless. Needless to say, we have not yet been able to break the bond of friendship that tied us to one another 15 years ago. When I need advice I still call her. She does the same. We share our deepest, most private secrets. When we face painful situations, we still immediately connect because we know we can and it will be as if we never moved away from each other. She sat on the phone with me while I waited in the emergency room during my third miscarriage and simply listened to me cry. And I watch her closely during our precious moments together (both peaceful and chaotic) because I admire and respect her so deeply as a woman, a mother, a wife, a friend, and minister that I consider her life a constant learning time for myself. We all need friends like that. Ruth sharpens me like iron sharpens iron because I allow her to.
I don’t want to short-change the other friendships in my life that deeply impact and mentor me. I can call them by name and often to do so that I never forget the value of friendship. For me it’s Kim, Sarah, Beka, Liz, Vanessa, Jessica, Ruth, Erin, Lisa, Kelly, Ashli, Laura, Mary, Cheryl, Megan, Vicki and the list can go on. What are the names in your life? I urge you to think about those women and reflect on how their lives, actions, and words have taught you. Kim has been one of my best friends since we were 8 years old. We know each other’s every secret, share every joy, and cry with one another over every pain. We were college roommates and each other’s maids of honor in our weddings. Kim moved directly to Colorado after her wedding. When Kim left for her honeymoon, I literally cried for hours because I was overwhelmed with the realization that this would be the first time in the past 15 years that we had ever been apart for more than a week. I love her like a sister. We are nothing alike and we never miss a beat. She teaches me how to relax and have fun and not sweat the little stuff. She makes me laugh in a way that soothes my soul. This is good for me because I am a Type A personality if there ever was one. My sister-in-law, Sarah, keeps in touch mostly by phone. We call each other about once every 3 weeks and talk for 3-4 hours to catch up on everything that has happened. She makes me laugh with her brilliant, sarcastic wit and I always listen to her words for insight into how to be a better mom. She has 4 kids and is pregnant with number 5. So I figure if I can take her wisdom from life with 5 kids, my family of 3 will benefit. She is Godly, intelligent, and shows great creativity and purpose in how she interacts with her children. I admire that and learn from her. My other sister-in-law, Vanessa, is a professional couponer; She saves money for a living and teaches others how to do it. I learn from her and cherish her input. Liz lives in Michigan near me and we were friends in college. We have built a much closer relationship over the past 2 years. We have supported each other during tough times and prayed for each other during terrifying moments. I waited “on call” when she went into preterm labor with her second in case I needed to watch her daughter Katie. And She rushed to my house at 6am on Valentine’s morning last year when we had to take Seth to the ER. Thank God for friends like that. Liz is a teacher with an emphasis in special education. My son, Seth, has some learning needs and Liz has been a vital resource for information for me as we determine how to address Seth’s education needs. I seek her advice and I really listen and digest it. She helps me unite academics and spiritual growth for my children and I cherish her as a Godly confidante. She has mentored me in an area that will affect my children and their education for the next 20 years. Recognize your friends’ strengths and learn from them.
When Josh and I moved to Columbus, OH in 2007 for him to start his general surgery residency, I found a support group for spouses of medical residents. Let me preface this by telling you that the life of a spouse in medical training is tough. It is a lonely path and it is a long one. Josh was working 16-hour days and would be lucky to have two days off in a month. When he was home, he was exhausted beyond functionality and still had to spend all of his time at home reading and studying and preparing academically for the hospital. I had 2 kids by this time and medical school had been a very difficult time for me. I was gearing up to “survive” 5 horrible years of residency as a single mom. However, when I arrived in Columbus I discovered that there was a group of wives who hung out together. I decided to try to get involved. Truly, God blew me away in Columbus with the friends that he provided for my children and me. Not only did I have women who were also experiencing life in medical training to just have fun with, but I found friendships I could learn from. We would have playgroups and girls’ nights out and we would celebrate holidays together when our husbands were working. But, we would also pray for each. We formed a Bible study to start growing together. I watched Kelly explore the world and be adventurous with her kids even when her husband was working and it inspired me to LIVE LIFE with my children, and not wait for Josh to come home first, because that would not likely happen. She taught me the joy of having a spirit of independence as a mom. Laura showed me how to live my role as a mom with purpose and joy. Ashli showed me how to have patience with my kids, even when I was at my limit, and how to make the every day activities fun and creative. Mary demonstrates remarkable strength, energy, and tenderness as a mother. She is tough and incredibly loving and she makes having fun with her kids a priority and I admire that. Lisa constantly demonstrates passionate joy and excitement in her walk with Christ. Her impenetrable positive attitude challenges me to be much more content and faithful than I usually am. Erin and I share frustrations and stresses and funny moments. Her focus, structure, intelligence, and peace are inspiring as I seek to replicate her example. And she helps me to put the moments of life into perspective by always bringing me back to the heart of God as a Father as we seek to share our hearts as mothers with our kids.
When my oldest son, Seth, was potty training, I was very overwhelmed with our lack of progress. He was three and a half and we had been working on it for over 6 months. There was one particular day that really tried my patience. Seth had had an accident in the kitchen. By “accident” I mean that he had gone to a corner to do his business in his pants. By the time I found him, the mess was everywhere. I will not go into a lot of detail for your sake other than to say that the mess did not only involve Seth, but also my crawling daughter and the family dog. I was about 6 months pregnant with my third baby at the time and was still sick because I am one of those lucky pregnant ladies that get all day morning sickness for nine months of my pregnancy. I bathed and contained the dog, bathed and contained the children. And sat my pregnant self down on my kitchen floor with Clorox wipes in hand to begin on the rest of the mess. I was completely overwhelmed. I burst into tears. I sat on my floor, surrounded by pee and poop, and just cried for a couple of minutes. Then I cleaned up the floor and went on with my day. Erin called me that night and, in the process of the conversation, asked how the potty training had gone that day. (She has four girls my kids’ ages, so she sympathizes) I told her about my day and was venting my frustration, “I don’t understand it! He knows how to use the potty! He knows when has to go because he hides in a corner. I cannot for the life of me comprehend why he would rather poop his pants and just wallow in filth, when he could just use the toilet. It’s so much cleaner and easier! It’s so simple. I just want to scream, Stop pooping your pants!” Erin was silent for a moment, and then she started laughing and said, “Do you think that’s ever how God feels about us? Do you think he’s ever like, “Just stop pooping your pants!”?” We need friends like that. Friends who can turn poop into comedy and a teachable moment. This same group of friends in Columbus provided meals to my family for an entire month after I delivered my third child. And when one of my close friends in the group lost her daughter, I saw the love of Christ in friendship presented in a phenomenal way as this group surrounded her with support. I also saw Jessica, the grieving mother, cling to her faith in Christ and make decisions that were bold and strong. I learned many things from her about loss and faith and strength that I will hold near to my heart for as long as I live.
The wives group in Columbus was so influential for me that I felt God lead me to start something similar in Detroit, MI after we moved for our next phase of residency. I joined with a couple other medical wives to start a Detroit chapter of Side By Side, which is a spouse support group through the Christian Medical and Dental Association. It is an international organization with nearly 40 chapters and its whole purpose is to provide fellowship, support, and mentorship for medical and dental wives. Medical marriages are under constant assault and women often feel like single moms. We move constantly for training, live on very tight training stipends, and are rarely near family. This group provides a family for these women. We do fun stuff and have playgroups. But we also have Bible study and pray for each other. We babysit for each other and throw baby showers and bring meals. We learn from each other how to grow healthy medical marriages and how to be happy, purposeful women and moms. We seek growth together and we hold each other up during moments of stress.
Mentorship Recap:
Mentorship. It happens all the time. It happens in the deep moments when we are seeking guidance. It happens in the hilarious moments when we feel we are losing our minds. It happens in the everyday moments at the park, in the school hallway, on the ride to soccer practice, sitting at McDonalds, on the phone with a friend, in the church, and any other place that we go and interact with those around us. I once heard an older, wiser mom say to never underestimate the power of the kitchen. She said it was in the kitchen while she washed dishes, made dinner, fixed snacks, and cleaned the floor that she had invested the most in her children’s lives. That was the place where they would sit and talk or ask questions and tell her about their day. It was the place where she’d had the most opportunity to impact and mentor her children. She said, “The kitchen is holy ground because it was in those everyday moments that God was able to grow my children.” She mentored her children in the kitchen and then she mentored me as a young mom by sharing her story with me. I don’t know the woman’s name and I have never spoken to her since. But she left an imprint of mentorship on me. These are just some of my stories with my friends’ names. You have your own. I shared them because I wanted to demonstrate how mundane and constant mentorship really is. It should be happening all the time. I was able to glean moments of mentorship from all of these people because they shared with me and demonstrated for me what God was doing in their lives at that time. God was able to use their life circumstances and strengths to teach me about an area in which I needed growth. Those moments are happening all the time for me, because Lord knows, I need it!
Teachability:
So I’m going to make an important point right now. We are all called to mentor by living a life pleasing to God and sharing His wisdom with those around us. AND, we are all called to BE mentored. It should be a give and take situation of wisdom and knowledge throughout our entire lives. As God matures you, you help pass that wisdom onto those around you. But none of us will ever “arrive” at perfect spiritual and emotional and intellectual maturity, so we must always maintain a teachable spirit that God is able to pour into through the involvement of others in our lives. I do not care if you are 29 or 99, you still have areas in your life that need to be sharpened. Just as younger women learn from older women, older women can often find lessons to be learned from younger women who might have experienced life from a different vantage point. Additionally, you absolutely will not under any circumstances reach your full potential as a mentor if you are no longer seeking growth and mentorship yourself. There is no room for pride in mentorship. If you stop being mentored at any point in your life, your well of wisdom and advice will quickly run dry for those around you. You will run out of things to pour out because you have stopped allowing yourself to be poured into. Mentorship is like a stream that water flows into and then flows out of into a larger body of water. If you block off the stream, it will dry up and nothing but stagnant water will be left to flow out. The Bible gives us lots of scriptures that highlight the importance of having a heart and mind that seeks wisdom and knowledge from God by being receptive to those around us.
Proverbs 19:8 (New International Version, ©2011)
8 The one who gets wisdom loves life; the one who cherishes understanding will soon prosper.
I am personally convinced that you can evaluate the teachability of a person’s heart by observing the quality of his/her life. People who are teachable usually make good decisions because they are seeking wisdom and guidance. People who are not teachable often have a string of disastrous decisions under their belt and are usually found in the company of idiots. They choose to hang out with people who are not teachable and who make poor decisions and whose advice is bad. This is not really a complicated issue. You will often hear people who make mistakes say, “I know people tried to warn me, but I’m just one of those people who has to experience things for myself.” Well, excuse me, but I think that’s stupid, or at least foolish. That’s not teachability, that’s stubbornness. And those people will suffer for it. Teachability is defined as “the ability to be taught.” If you cannot be taught to keep your hands off of a hot stove without you having to touch it and experience a painful burn first, you are not teachable. When I was a teenager, I had lots of friends who felt they had to experience life before they could believe what other people told them. I remember thinking that seemed ridiculous. I watched my friends suffer life-long consequences caused by bad decisions that were completely avoidable. On the flip side, I remember thinking, “People tell me to not drink because it clouds my judgment and I could get hurt, alright, won’t do that. They say don’t have sex because I could get a disease or pregnant or just be heartbroken. Well none of that sounds ideal. Cross that off my list. They say don’t smoke because it could give me lung cancer and make me smell bad. I don’t care how cool people think it is, lung cancer is not cool. Let’s avoid that!” And so my list went on about choices, big and small, that I chose to submit to the advice I had received from people who I thought probably knew better than me. And I don’t regret it. Never once have I thought that I wish I had learned for myself about the dangers of drunk driving by getting into a fatal car accident. My life has been blessed and I truly believe that it is because I largely choose to surround myself with wise people and then consider their words of knowledge when I make decisions.
The Bible talks a lot about the importance of associating yourself with people who are wise and who will encourage you. I believe that the people we choose to spend the majority of our time with will dramatically influence who we will become and the quality of our decisions.
Proverbs 13:20
20 Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.
This particular scripture not only emphasizes the importance of seeking wisdom, but it also places the responsibility of choosing the right people to spend time with squarely on our shoulders.
My final point about mentorship is in a practical sense. If you desire to teach and be taught, you must live a life of prayer and connection to the Heavenly Father to recognize when those moments are available and to know what needs to be said or to hear what God has for you. Connection to the Holy Spirit and growth by immersing ourselves in God’s Word are our tools for recognizing the lessons God has for us and then for being able to successfully pass them on to those we interact with.
Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Prayer, scripture, and spiritual growth that causes the mind to be renewed gives us the tools we need to recognize teachable moments and to allow God to use us more effectively to impact those around us.
Conclusion:
As relational beings, we women were created and designed to communicate with and support others, and we are all called to a life of mentorship. Every one of us has a legacy to pass on. We are all daughters who received a legacy from the women ahead of us. Some of us are mothers who have a critical responsibility to train up our children according to the Word of God. That’s a precious piece of maternal legacy. But even if you are not a mom, you are a woman who has a purpose. And if you are living and breathing in this world, you have a story to share and a legacy to pour out for the women with whom you come in contact. It does not matter how old you are or how young you are. Others will watch your experiences and example as you seek God and grow in your walk with Him. What will your legacy be? And if you are still living and breathing, then you have more to learn and I charge you with looking for the lessons in those around you. Pay attention to what God might have for you in the actions and words of others, in both the small moments and the big ones. And when you have learned a lesson, pass it on. Thank you and Happy Mother’s Day.
