Taking the general opinion of the people where I come from, having a mentor is weird. Even when having a mentor was kind of trendy, the people in my place of origin would still look at you funny if you said you had one (or wanted one). I’ve certainly never been part of a mentoring programme or met someone once a week. But, when I look back on my adult life I can easily point to women who I would say played a mentoring-type role in my life. My mentors just didn’t go by that name. I didn’t call my mentors mentors, I just called them women I knew from whom I could hopefully learn a thing or two.

I had women who had mothered longer than me that I watched and questioned about mothering my own babies. I knew women at Thursday Bible Study who knew scripture so well that I asked them things and found excuses to listen to them talk (even when it wasn’t supposed to be to me). I served at church alongside people who I watched as they went about their regular routine, seeing how they responded to things. Writers and speakers and online influencers have all shaped how I’ve grown. But I’ve never had one single person in a particular season who I would call ‘My Mentor’.

I do regularly pray for God to bring people into my life to help me grow in the direction he has for me. I regularly pray for mentor-type-people to come alongside my children. And I definitely pray for us all to have humility enough to hear those who speak wisdom to us, and courage enough to work at what needs to be worked at.

I agree with Downs when she writes, ‘You can have multiple mentors for different areas of your life. A work mentor. A family mentor. A calling mentor.’ May God bring into our lives people who can guide us in the areas God wants to grow us. And may we be brave enough to ask them our questions, to be vulnerable and real with the purpose of growing.

Are we brave enough to ask someone older (or further along in their journey) for a coffee this week?