#theproblemwithlabels

It hit me, watching my two year old niece interacting with a girl six years old. She was laughing and playing and acting as I had never seen her act before. She became a little girl whom I had so long seen as just a baby.

Of course her mother has in influence on her like no other, this little girl lives and breathes her momma. What is said and done, whether positive or negative, finds its way into this sweet young ones habits and ways of seeing and approaching life. A great responsibility.

And, yes, I hear her copy my words and sentences and crazy laughing and dancing. Telling me how I am funny or pretty in an echo of what I tell her. “Pretty girl” I say to her, and she touches my face, “pretty girl, Becca, pretty girl” with a huge grin.

Yet there is something so different about the way I saw her interact with a girl only a few years older. Because it seems this girl had no authority over her, no way of feeding her or providing her needs, yet this girl could make up stories for her and run in front of her and jump for so long on a mattress with her. I had never seen this little girl so alive and excited. The way she looked at her new friend was filled with awe and wonder, knowing perhaps that she was so close to being the same size as her but somehow taller and somehow able to speak more of the English language. She was inspired it seemed, in awe almost, of this friend she could run with so freely.

I wrestle with the concept of mentoring. Being a mentor to young girls only several years younger than I am I tend to wonder what exactly is my role in the life of another girl. It can be so easy to fall into the need for teaching and living intentionally, but perhaps this is not what young girls need. Perhaps what they need is someone with whom they can run free. Someone they can look to, inspired and in awe that they have found a friend who is like them only a little older and a little more familiar with some of the ways of this crazy and broken world.

Perhaps there is a time, in relationship, to be a mother to those who have not. And perhaps there is a time to be a sister, a friend. Perhaps there is a time to simply come alongside and run freely with the young ones who look on in wonder - perhaps our role is to be a piece of kindle in the fire of such wonder. Let us not be those who seek to mentor and in doing so snuff out their living fires by our own heart aches or insecurities.