Mentors

I am beyond blessed to be at a school where I am free to believe and to doubt without looking like a freak.

Several professors at APU are involved with Sticky Faith, a research study on the spiritual development of students from high school into college. The vast majority of students leave their faith at home when they come to college; yet the students who are the most "successful" at maintaining their beliefs tend to be those who had adult mentors besides their parents.

There is something absolutely necessary about being inter-generational. It's no joke that it takes a village to raise a child; we absolutely require multiple voices to speak into our lives. It takes more than two parents with full time jobs to be transformative and develop within us a faith to last a lifetime.

For me, mentors took over the place of my absent parents. They are the ones who taught me how to function in life. The guided me through the mundane of doing laundry and making a budget. They stood beside me through the milestones of my life at graduation and during college decision making. They listened to me whine and taught me to fix all things through prayer.

Yet the importance of having mentors doesn't seem to ever be over. I continue to have people who pour into my life.

I have a sweet friend who sometimes laughs at the amount of people who I refer to as "mentor". But what else do you call them? What else do you call the 20-somethings who let me borrow their car, help me make decisions, and never miss a chance to pray for me? What else do you call the lady who is forty years my senior who I have breakfast with on Wednesday mornings and prays for me by name each and every day? What else do you call the girl who is in her junior year and says "We will get you the money to go to Oxford. When are you free to talk?"

They aren't doing anything exceptional. They're just giving me the time and attention that I crave. And they certainly aren't perfect. Sure, I have been hurt by some of them and occasionally wanted to kick one or two of them in the shin, but they are humans. They are breathing, feeling, and discovering this world beside me. They show me how to gracefully fail, how to recover from poor decisions, how to rely on prayer and God alone.

They are doing nothing special. They are simply doing what the Lord made them to do: love.

And it has made all the difference.

Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subjects to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

Titus 2:4-5