Do you know about the wonderful Moms Together Facebook page founded by T. Suzanne Eller?
It is a great social media hangout for moms, providing a community of support and encouragement as they seek to raise up the next generation.
I’m honored to spend all day today (Tuesday), serving as as the Moms Together guest host. We’re going to be talking about mentoring and teens, which is certainly one of my passions. I’ll be answering questions and presenting ideas that will encourage moms to engage with a mentoring mindset in raising their teens!
If you’re dropping in from Moms Together, welcome!
If this was more than our virtual home, I’d be inviting you into my home through the back door and apologizing for all the shoes you just might trip over. Once inside, you’d have your pick at my coffee and tea bar — a purposefully designed nook that keeps me from running out to Starbuck’s and gently nudges me to invite wandering souls inside for some love, laughter, and a warming of their heart. Let me explain.
Years ago an older friend, who lived her life with a mentoring mindset, handed me a basket jammed packed with tea bags. Forget the boxes and order. This basket was not for the Type A personality! Yet the eclectic style reflected my spirit and spoke to my heart through the message it held.
“Lisa, always have a cup of tea ready whenever you talk to your girls. No matter where their heart is at, it will help to warm up the conversation and open a door to their soul.”
Back than “those girls” were twenty teenagers from around the world, for whom I was responsible for as a dorm mom at a boarding and day college prep school. Never mind the fact that my own girls were only four and two, with our twins not even conceived. I was a young woman. A young mom of young children. And even relatively young in my faith. But by God’s grace, I was unusually teachable — compared to my stubborn, rebellious, learn all by myself typical approach to life. I think because I was desperate, I was willing to listen and learn! I took my older friend’s advice and approached every difficult conversation with a teen with a cup of tea in hand.
Committed to Moms & Mentoring
Even though I only served in the girls dorm for two years, our family has been in this community for more than sixteen years. Throughout, I’ve had the opportunity to mentor teens, one-on-one and in a group setting that we call ETC. The tea theme has carried throughout, continually providing a purpose and meeting ground for our relationships to grow into something of eternal value.
It was those years in the dorm, however, that established my commitment to the Lord that I would mother my children with a mentoring mindset — taking everything I did with those teenage girls, in terms of how I communicated, listened, responded, prayed, engaged, and taught — and incorporate it into my mothering style. It has been amazing to see how God has blessed the relationship with my own children in ways that I only hoped for years ago. I’m certain it is God’s grace at work in this messy, imperfect life!
Mentoring our children is hard work! It takes intentionality, determination, focus. It requires humility, patience, creativity. But there is nothing like a mom who mentors her own children, especially her teen daughters.
As I’ve continued to mentor teens over the last decade, I’ve seen how desperately this generation longs for the involvement of their parents. They want more than moms on a course of controlling their lives. They desire input, but through questions. They long for interaction, but not in a confrontational way — that’s where the tea helps! Girls really do want their moms involved in their lives, but it is a dance of watching, responding, listening, training. It doesn’t fit a mold, but there is certainly a pattern. Teens, girls and guys, really want the attention on their time-frame and availability, when they are ready to talk. It requires a flexibility that stretches most moms to the limit! Yes, it can be tiring, but this is their love language and has such eternal value.
Putting on a mentoring mindset might be identical to simply being an intentional mother. For me, however, a mentoring mindset reminds me to treat my daughter as I would a child that doesn’t belong to me, but one I’ve been put in charge to care for — it awakens the reality of how I am to steward this motherhood call — one I’ve been appointed to by God. That’s who my kids belong to, and so a mentoring mindset keeps this reality in check for me! Ultimately, a mentoring mindset insists that I put the momma heart aside (you know, those times when you react because you’ve been hurt, feel like you failed as a mom, or their behavior triggers some wound in you), while functioning in a relationship built on discipling and mentoring principles.
Providing Moms Connection & Resources
We know that putting on a mentoring mindset is hard. Investing in our teens kids can be exhausting, especially if the early years were challenging, too! But that is, in part, why More to Be exists. We’re here to encourage and support moms who desire to step into significant mentoring roles within their own family.
It is a beautiful thing seeing a woman transformed in her role as mom when she discovers, by the work of the Holy Spirit and grace of God, that she is equipped by God not only in her calling of motherhood but also to influence the world for the glory of God through impacting the next generation.
More to Be is passionate about
impacting teens, influencing moms, and inspiring mentors.
Welcome to our community of sisters who are
becoming more bright and more beautiful as we become more like Him.
