Mentorship 101... or Remedial Mentorship... Whichever You Prefer

Happy Women’s Day, or er… belated Women’s Day! I know it was yesterday, but I just didn’t have it in me to write yesterday. Therefore, if you will indulge me a little bit, I am going to talk about women. Now to all the guys, before you get all upset, I promise my woman talk will be brief and hopefully painless as I introduce my point.

I wasn’t even aware of Women’s Day yesterday until everyone on social media decided to alert me. Though, when I found out, I decided to reflect on what women inspire me. I naturally started to think of women such as Betty White, Tina Fey, Sandra Bullock, and Amy Poehler. The problem was these weren’t really women I looked up to, so on further reflection, I said the expected people such as my mom, my grandma, and my Aunt Darlene. Yet, I still was not satisfied with those answers. I wanted to say someone that has really stepped up outside of famous people or family to really inspire and lead me. I first thought of my friend at the rescue mission, Abigail, but I kind of just watch Abigail from the sidelines in awe of her awesomeness (that sounded so redundant, but I am just going to roll with it). I guess the woman I was looking for was what you may call a “mentor.”

Earlier this week, I had met a girl from my church at a meeting we had Wednesday night. We did the whole, “You’re cool! What’s your name? Give me your number! I’ll send you a Facebook request” thing, and she sent me a message yesterday inviting me to a women’s Bible study kind of thing that our church apparently does that I didn’t even know existed. My first thought was You’re kidding! Aren’t those things for like middle-aged women? However, I reasoned with myself by saying my friend was going and she was close to my age, so it couldn’t be too bad. I went, and I am so glad I did because I don’t think there was a woman in the room above 35.

Our pastor’s wife led a lesson on mentorship. I didn’t realize just how much I did not know about mentorship and how lightly I think we take it these days. It is a big deal in a way. I didn’t even know there was supposed to be a specific goal a mentor was supposed to provide. It makes sense. I guess I had just always been told the importance of having a mentor, but never the point. I mean your mentor should be someone that can lead you because they have been there before. Someone getting ready to get married may need a married couple that is kind of young to mentor him or her. Someone getting ready to go to college may want a recent graduate of college to be their mentor.

I don’t want it to sound like I am completely new to this whole mentorship thing. Believe me, I have tried to have a mentor before, but I feel like each time it has fallen through, and maybe it is because we have never been taught how to mentor or be mentored. I can’t be the only person to have said to someone, “Hey will you be my mentor?” and they say sure, but two months later you haven’t done anything.

All I ever had been taught about searching for a mentor is “they need to be older” or “they need to have experience” and I don’t think that is necessarily the things we need to focus on. We need to focus on what a mentor is expected to do not who they are expected to be. All we really need them to be is someone that is able to lead because they have been there before and they need to be mature in their faith. What a mentor needs to do is totally different and something we DESPERARELTY NEED to understand. They need to be praying for the person they mentor daily and be sort of an accountability partner. They should be weekly checking on the person they mentor through a text, email, or phone call. This communication should be to show love and encouragement, and every other week the mentor should spend time with their mentee. These all seem simple, but here is one that I never considered: serving together! We can grow and learn in service with each other. Therefore, this lesson suggests that a mentor and mentee serve at least once a month together. This was just all really helpful for me to know what to expect of a mentor, and maybe we need to lie out these responsibilities and make it clear when we enter a mentoring relationship. I think it is important for the mentor and the person they’re mentoring to know these expectations because at some point a mentee needs to mentor as well. A perfect biblical example to back this is Moses and Joshua. Moses very much mentored Joshua, but Joshua did not really pour into anyone and we saw a nation begin to fall.

There are responsibilities of the person being mentored too. We need to show honor to our mentor, come with questions, and always apply what we have learned from our mentor.

When we remember these things, I think mentorship can become the beautiful, beneficial relationship that it was meant to be.

On that note, I am thinking I am going to try to seek a mentor and discuss our expectations on this. I need to figure out my goal of mentorship, and while the expected goal would be for me to seek wise counsel on marriage, I am wondering if maybe I need to go with someone that can help me alleviate guilt and insecurity. It will definitely take some prayer and guidance from others. But I hope to one day REALLY SOON to enter a mentoring relationship that can help me mentor to others.

I can then add that someone to my list with Lucille Ball.