My Own Titus 2 Mentors
My life has been richer because many older women have invested in my life. The first was my mother. Her words from my childhood are impressed on my heart. I was blessed as an adult to continue hearing them during visits and daily phone calls. What a loss it was when a stroke affected her speech several years before she passed away. After that her words were very limited.
Another early mentor was Miss Dovie Watson, who taught my Sunday School class. She continued to encourage me after I had children of my own. When our family came home from out of state to visit, I got to see Miss Dovie at church. When she saw me, an almost indescribable smile—I can see it now— would light up her pretty face and she would say in her gentle, velvet voice, “There’s my girl.” Oh, how the memory warms and encourages me still. I admired her gentleness and spunk. Mother showed me a picture of Miss Dovie sitting on a horse on her 100th birthday.
When I was a young mother, I learned from several older women in our congregation. Many of the choices I have made in my mothering I learned from the words and the lives of those women. I showed you this picture of some of them last year.
Joyce Chadwell, Tommie Waters, Adene Blaylock, yours truly, Cora Beal Shields
I have written several times about dear Cora Beal, pictured at far right. Once I shared this photo of her with her husband, Dr. F. Douglas Shields.
Doug and Cora Beal Shields
I took that photo at a conference in Nashville. As Ray and I visited with these precious friends of many decades, I told Cora Beal how very much she had meant to me and about how I believe that what she shared with me helps me now in what I share with each of you.
After Doug listened to me, he said to Cora Beal: “Did you hear that, Kiddo?” in a way that said, “See! See what good you have done?” By the way, I loved hearing him call her Kiddo, which was their special nickname for each other.
Doug passed away a few years ago, but Ray and I got to visit with Cora Beal last January. We are deeply grateful for that visit, which was our last. She passed away this past December 20, twenty years to the day after my father passed away.
I hope your life is blessed by godly older women. If it is not, please try to find at least one that you can bless. You will be blessed in return.
Having a mentor takes humility. When a woman admits to needing a mentor, she is admitting that she needs to learn. This is good for our children to see. We want them to be willing to learn. Our having mentors tells them that this willingness is not a sign of weakness, but of strength.
Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior,
not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine,
teaching what is good,
so that they may encourage the young women
to love their husbands, to love their children,
to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind,
being subject to their own husbands,
so that the word of God will not be dishonored.
Titus 2:3-5