Long before we exchanged stories over lunch, we talked across wooden
desks, hunched over in too-small chairs. God planted something during those
parent-teacher conferences and for years He watered it, then patiently watched it
grow.
Her youngest son dropped a square envelope on my desk one morning.
Inside was a note from her, brief but sincere.
She told me she was praying for me.
What she didn’t know was that my heart was breaking that day. Deep in the trenches of infertility, my most
recent loss had left me devastated. I
was smiling on the outside, but crumbling on the inside.
Years later, when my twins were barely two, I found myself sitting
next to her in a bible study class. One day I found the courage to tell her how
God used that note to shine hope into my dark corner. She invited me to lunch,
and in no time, it was a regular thing. She listened intently to my latest twin
toddler tale, years past that stage with her own two boys. Knowing that she survived those years with
most of her sanity intact was so refreshing to me. I didn’t call her my mentor;
she was my friend.
I’ll never forget the day she told me she had cancer. It was
aggressive, but God was more powerful, she reminded me. He would be with her every step. She took my
focus off her illness and redirected it to the God who is mighty to save. Even
as her hair fell out, we kept our lunch dates.
Some days she told me she was angry at God. She didn’t hide her fatigue. She was honest. And she was beautiful. We prayed for each
other, confided in each other, and shared meals with each other. As we sat
across the table, one thing became crystal clear:
We were both
just normal women who needed Jesus.
When she died nine months ago, it left this giant gaping hole in my
heart, and it’s taken me all this time to figure out why. God placed a need for
this type of relationship within us all. In fact, research shows that after marriage
and family, mentoring is the third most powerful relationship for influencing
human behavior. *
As women, we need another woman who’s been there and walked all the
way through it to tell us to keep going.
We need her to listen to our fears and our dreams and tell us to love
our husbands the best we know how. We
need her to sit across the table and just be real. We need her to drop the forced conversation starters and tidy responses and just invite us into the
hard, the ugly, the stuff in life that can’t be controlled or explained or
summed up with some cheerful cliché on a coffee mug. We need to watch her face
the biggest giant and do so with courage and grace and beauty, so that when we
stare down our own giants, we remember her fight, her determination, her God.
There will always be a woman a few steps ahead of me, but there’s a
woman trailing behind me, too. There is
a girl who needs to hear my story, my struggles, and my hidden fears. She needs
me to invite her into my life and into my mess.
She doesn’t need another Facebook friend or another self-help book, and
she certainly doesn’t need someone with all the answers.
The enemy hates women. He
does. But he can only advance when we
leave gaps, which is why God calls us to stand shoulder to shoulder. When we
position ourselves in between the woman behind us and the woman in front, the
gaps begin to close.
Soon afterward
[Jesus] went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good
news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women
who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene,
from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s
household manager, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of
their means. (Luke 8:1-3
ESV)
These women were different ages with completely different social statuses
walking through different life stages, yet three common threads wove their
lives together in a beautiful way.
They shared a Common
Message: They joined Jesus in
proclaiming the gospel to all cities and villages.
The gospel is the key in every relationship. It’s the good news that
Jesus came to restore our broken relationship with the Father, but He also came
to restore our relationships with each other. There’s no circumstance or
struggle outside His reach.
They shared a
Common Need: All had been healed by Jesus
and, as a result, followed Him.
We all need to be cured of our brokenness, healed of our bitterness
and doubt and our unbelief. We need to
be restored after running away. We’re in constant need of Jesus' cure. All of us. And it's this common need for Him that unites
us and breathes life into our relationships.
They shared a
Common Commitment: They gave generously out of
their own means.
This is so much more than financial resources. It's committing to
share our talents, our gifts, and life experiences. It’s being generous with our time, and it's telling
our stories. Everything we've been given is for service and for purpose.
These same women witnessed Jesus' unjust and brutal death yet even
in that dark hour when it seemed that the enemy had the upper hand, what bound
them together kept their hope from unraveling.
They were there together at the foot of the cross with all their
shattered dreams and questions that echoed in the silence. They held each other as He took His last
breath. Together they watched the men lay Jesus in the tomb. Then they went home to prepare fragrances for
His body. Together they got up early in
the morning and walked in the dark to the tomb.
And together they were the first
ones to encounter the risen Jesus.
They shared the hard, the ugly and painful.
They shared the tragedy that made no sense.
They shared their fears and questions.
They shared their time.
They shared their resources and talents.
But most of all, they shared Jesus and they never took their eyes
off of Him.
May we open our eyes to who’s walking in our wake. May we have the courage to move towards each
other with the same love and grace He’s shown us. Just like Mary and Joanna, Susanna and the
others, when we invite each other into our mess, we will always find Jesus
there.
In loving
memory of Sherri
All eyes up
***
Sue Edwards and Barbara Neumann have researched this topic extensively. In Organic Mentoring: A Mentor's Guide to Relationships with Next Generation Women, they share what works and what doesn't, and they remind us what God has to say about mentoring relationships. If you are interested in learning more, this is a resource full of truth and wisdom.
*Larry Kreider, Authentic
Spiritual Mentoring: Nurturing Younger Believers Toward Spiritual Maturity (Ventura,
CA: Regal, 2008), 12.
No comments:
Post a Comment