Q: Alicia, you’ve said that you could probably spend an entire year blogging about mentoring. We all know that mentoring is your heartbeat. Why? How did mentoring become your focus?
A: Over my three+ decades with Jesus, and even before that through my Dad, the present of presence has been transformational to me. This is what I mean by mentoring: intentional, personal, customized, attentive relationship. Few things communicate value more than being listened to. Few things communicate freedom more than being known and being loved. A mentor gifts others with the safety of living honestly, the value of being heard, the hope of being believed in, and the faith of seeing what their eyes cannot yet see.
When Jesus interrupted my Atheistic existence, and gave me the present of His presence, the gift was familiar. My father had foreshadowed it: Dad’s eyes danced whenever we spent time together. Then Jesus immediately began gifting me with mentors. They didn’t buy the t-shirt but they lived a life that multiplied faith in me. For me, mentoring is not a one-way street. A mentor doesn’t sit serenely and spotlessly behind a glass asking insightful interrogatives. A mentor sits shoulder-to-shoulder, as a fellow pilgrim, listening, asking questions, delighting in silence, and sharing their own journey.
When my mentors said, “I’ve felt that way too,” I saw that God is comfortable with sincere questions. When my mentors said, “That discipline has always been hard for me. Let’s grow in it together,” I saw that God is pleased with the process, not just the outcome.
In short, I have seen mentoring transform people’s portraits of God from distant critique to near Beloved.
We tend to think that service (in particularly from a platform) is the height of Christian maturity. No. It is love. Loving God? Yes. And simultaneously sinking deeply into the reality that He loves us. The two loves are like dance partners that each cultivate the other’s depth, continually making the dance more mutual, more meaningful, and more wonderfully wild.
So why mentoring? Because it is a means to love. And I believe that our love matters to God. So really, whether it’s through writing or speaking or spiritual direction, I mentor to multiply lovers of God.
What people crave most now I think is to love and be loved. To know and be known. The only one with whom that can be perfect is with Jesus, but we can be “types” of Jesus in people’s lives. Satan is producing so many counterfeits right now, that my heart almost physically hurts.
I so appreciate the year that you spent with me on my journey. I think that in many ways it was only a beginning, a foundation, a starting line, but it was very important to where God is leading me. Thank you for taking the time.