Friends & Encouragers Needed

Do you have that one woman that you look up to, and who you go to for advice, that one woman who you really trust? I have been privileged to have two women in my life that I looked up to who I could trust, women who taught me, loved me and mentored me, my mom and my grandma. However, now I find myself at 45 and both my mom and my grandma have gone on to heaven. I am without a mentor and I am a proud mother of a wonderful 23-year-old daughter who I am privileged to mentor now.  However, a mentor or mentee does not have to be family. We can all be mentored and we can all be mentors, we all something to share, and surely we all have something to still learn.

Titus 2:3-5 "Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled." Now, ladies, we are all older than somebody, so we all have somebody to teach! I believe so many women are searching for mentors, friendship and true connection with other women.

In this day and age of technology where we are more connected than ever before, one in five people suffers from depression and loneliness. I remember as a kid, that my parents knew our neighbors on a first name basis and we actually had them over for dinner and games, often. I am ashamed to tell you I do not know any of my neighbors. We live indoors, in front of televisions, computers, and our phones either in our hands or within quick reach! We have lost that personal interaction with people. Which leaves so many with an emptiness and a deep longing for interaction with others. Loneliness is one of the top 5 things senior adult women especially widowed women tell me they suffer from when I see them in the hospital.  A friendship, a mentor or mentee can fill that emptiness and void in a persons' life.

I know that as the new year begins many of us are making resolutions, setting goals, getting organized and starting off on the right foot. Well, ladies let me encourage you to find someone to mentor or to be mentored by, or at the very least find a group of ladies to fellowship with together. As you may have noticed my verse on my page is about encouraging one another, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 it says, "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."  I think every human needs encouragement, human interaction, a purpose for living, let's face it sometimes life is just plain hard and having someone or several someones to encourage us is a great thing!

I will leave you with this thought, think of yourself as a single strand of thread going through this life all alone. The pressures of life tugging and pulling, this way and that way, how easily a single stand could be broken! However, in Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 "Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his (her) fellow (sister). But woe to him (her) who is alone when he (she) falls and has not another to lift him (her) up!" (Words in parenthesis are added by me!)  So, you see ladies, we could all use a friend, a good, close friend, someone to encourage us when life is hard or to celebrate with us when life is great!

Thank you, Lord, for giving us the gift of friendship to encourage and lift one another up. Help us to love one another and build one another up, praying for one another daily. Show us, Father, that we all have something special to share with someone else.

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