Winter 2019

10 / 28

10
It’s been a long time coming. For years you’ve done your duty teaching, training,
and loving your own children. Now you’re coming to the close of your work. Per-
haps you’re about to graduate your youngest child or maybe you’ve been done with
homeschooling for years.
Please hear my humble plea. Your job is not finished yet.
As a 30-year-old mom of five young children, I can tell you that experienced home-
school mothers have been my greatest relational resource. Although I was home-
schooled, I still have questions about how to homeschool my own children well. Every
generation needs to navigate the same questions of: “Why are we doing this?”“How do
I do this?” and“Who took my scissors?”Questions like these only confirmmy belief that
a new generation of homeschooling moms needs mentors.
In the book of Titus, Chapter 2, older women are instructed in proper conduct as men-
tors. They should be reverent in behavior, shouldn’t be an old gossip, and shouldn’t
be enslaved to wine. They are then told to teach the younger women to love their
Mentoring: The Next Frontier
BY ELIZABETH BAILEY
husbands, love their children, be sensible,
pure, homemakers, kind, subject to their
husbands, that the word of God may not
be reviled.
Do you fit this bill? If so, your example,
wisdom, and experience is a crucial part
of training younger women to faithfully
do their work. You’ve been promoted to
Mentor.
Some of you are Homeschooling Pioneers.
You didn’t have an older woman to show
you the ropes. You had to make your own
rope, hitch it to your wagon, and headWest!
Maybe you did have older women mentors
in your life, but some of them discouraged
you and questioned your harebrained idea
to homeschool your children. Your own
mother may have thought you mad!
If you didn’t have older women helping
you in your homeschooling journey, imag-
ine with me what it could have looked like
to have someone like that: Someone to tell
you that this homeschooling thing was
going to work. Someone to tell you that
the teenage years were not something to
dread. Someone to tell you that mistakes
will be made, but God’s hand is not too
short to save. Someone to tell you that
the choice you made to obey God’s call on
your life was going to change the world.
Pioneer, if this is you, then you have
been given a great gift:The Gift of Lack.
Because you have keenly felt firsthand
the lack of mentorship in your past work,
you are better equipped to see the needs
of the younger moms around you and
equip them for their present work. You
can be the mentor you never had. May
the vision that compelled you to blaze
the trail of homeschooling now be used
as vision to see and bless the upcoming
generation.
Some of you started homeschooling
after the Pioneers. The trail had been
blazed, and you were trying to live in the
unpopulated plains, and still felt awk-
ward taking your children to the grocery
store during public school hours. The
four-inch-thick Rainbow Resource Cata-
log (which doubled as a booster seat) was
loaded with tools to teach your children,
but it was all new territory for you. You
knew pioneers, or had at least heard of
them, so your journey wasn’t altogether
without mentors. Homeschool support
groups and peer friendships equipped