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FACING YOUR FEARS – 31 STORIES FROM M.O.M.
By now many schooling families have written or received their first progress reports. Areas of weakness emerge, the lunch menu sounds dull, and new pencils have broken tips. Moms who have a mentoring mindset will succeed, even when school year challenges stack up against us. How can mentoring give you a Grade A school year?
Teacher to Student
Whether the parent wears the hat of “academic teacher” or shares it with another adult, teachers have the potential to mentor their students. While the obvious subjects are academics, a teacher adds more to the building blocks of a child’s foundation than just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Solid academic skills rely on solid instruction, but a teacher with a mentor’s mind passes on life lessons while building up the character of her students.
Instead of just displaying a daily schedule or modeling the use of a classwork planner, a mentor-teacher models the truth that, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9).
Parent to Student
The learning of sounds and suffixes, sentences and subtraction, synonyms and sharing, has a way of peeling back character flaws and exposing life challenges. If all we ever teach our children is how to read well and count accurately, we have missed our window of opportunity. A mother’s task stretches beyond filling her child’s heart with knowledge to filling her child’s heart with wisdom.
It’s a temptation to let the work of school consume and even control us and our days, but a mentor-mom helps her student-child desire to, “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (Prov. 16:3).
Mom to Mom
In our passion for teaching our children and helping them reach their potential, we may allow them to dominate all of the space in our hearts, minds, and schedules. The school year and all that comes with it brings an opportunity for moms to mentor other moms. We’re skilled at knowing the sound of our own child’s cry, knowing if it’s legitimate or contrived, knowing if it’s urgent or playful.
A mom with a mentor’s heart tunes her ear to recognize when someone cries out for encouragement, guidance, friendship, understanding, or prayer. The classroom of life provides a chance for moms to mentor one another as school makes us scratch our heads or wipe our eyes, longing for practical wisdom. A mom with a mentor’s mind can be the answer to another mother’s prayer.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5).
Once we tune our hearts to influence those around us, God may ask us to use what we learn in the lives of others who long for a mentor and have no one. Consider how you might mentor: a child struggling in school, a teenage mom, a child learning English, a young mother, a woman at risk & separated from her children? As you grow your mentor’s heart, ask God to show you who is in your sphere of influence.
So if you received a progress report for “School Year Mentoring” how would you do?
- Are you making the most of your role as a teacher, formal or informal?
- Are you mentoring the minds and hearts of the children in your life?
- Are you mentoring other moms around you?
Like every school year before, it will go fast and be gone before we know it. Let’s leave the mark of a mentor’s heart on this school year!
By Julie Sanders at Come Have a Peace
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