Mentorship
When I started college, I had not given much thought to being mentored. I didn’t understand why it would be good for me. I felt like I had things together and didn’t really want to let people speak into my life. Growing up, I had older people around me who would invest in me but I wouldn’t have said that I was being mentored. My mindset shifted sometime after I arrived at Messiah College. My very first semester of school, I took a rock-climbing instructor course that was taught by Wendell Witter. He immediately began building a relationship with me that would change my life and would revolutionize my feelings about mentorship.
My relationship with Wendell has several layers. First, he was my professor for many of the courses I took at Messiah. Second, he was the director of the Loft, a program that I was a part of. We did leadership development and team building for other student groups and Wendell invested in the student leaders that made up the Loft team. As my relationships with Wendell the professor and Wendell the Loft director grew, we became friends as well. Later in college I helped him teach a class to some younger students and he also became my boss when I was part of the Adventure Education work study program. Wendell and his wife Tari invited me into their home to experience life with them. I had the amazing opportunity to observe them navigating life. They allowed me to be present in a lot of happy moments with their family, such as when their oldest sons were baptized, and they let me see the hard parts of their lives, too. I have seen them navigate tricky family situations and have been there to pray with them when things got hard. Wendell has asked me questions that have made me stop and think about my life and the decisions that I wrestle with. He has encouraged me when I struggle to see the good in me and was the first person to celebrate with me when I achieved my first trad lead. (Trad leading is a technical type of rock climbing) The conversations that we have shared push me to grow in ways that I never would have imagined.
During my junior year of college, I attended a conference that was hosted by the Coalition of Christian Outreach, a college ministry. As I sat and listened during a workshop on discerning your callings, I got a sense that one of mine is to disciple and mentor others. Because of my time with Wendell, I knew how to pursue that calling. I started looking for ways to invest in the people around me. I gradually took on that role for others. Toward the end of my college experience, I had people share with me that they saw me as a mentor figure in their lives. It was so rewarding to realize that I was living out this calling. When I had to leave school because of COVID, I regressed from investing in people. I did not have the same opportunities that I had when I was living on campus. I knew that I was not living out my full potential but I wasn’t sure how to change that. One day, Wendell called me and told me about the job that I currently have working for OneLife. My role there is to disciple and mentor people who are a few years younger than me. Because I had Wendell invest in me, I know how to push my students towards growth. I do not have to have it all together; I just need to be willing to invite others into life with me and allow them to learn from how I live.
Mentorship is such a simple thing, yet it is hard to do well. Allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough for others to come alongside you and learn from your successes and mistakes is a scary thing. The pressure of knowing that I am always being an example for others is heavy, but it is an honor to be invited into this type of work. Despite the challenges of mentoring and discipling, I can’t imagine anything fitting me better. I feel honored to have the opportunity to play a role in the growth of the people around me.
