Spiritual leadership

I find myself in numerous positions of spiritual leadership this year.  If you had asked me as a confident teenager I would have said that I relished leadership positions, but in the last ten years I have realized that I much prefer being a little worker bee.  Mostly this is because I like getting a task and then going back to my little corner to complete said task.

This year I have found a new hardship to leadership - the task of standing strong for others.  Each week requires me to reach into my own spiritual reserve and mentor others who are brand new in their faith, or perhaps even still seeking for something.  Even more than that, I have found myself as a mother mentor, a good 6 or 7 years ahead of most of the women in my study group, and just on par with the others.

I find myself craving sage words of advice and experience from one who has gone before me.  This year I have suddenly realized that I lack such a mentor for myself in my own journey.  I am not one to step out of a comfortable circle, which makes it hard for me to make new friends.  Usually I can only manage to get at ease with someone who has quite a bit in common with me.  Otherwise I can spend most of the time in utter silence, desperate to come up with something to say.  this girl doesn't do small talk.

I have one friend who is five years ahead, and who just happens to have a carbon copy of my family (children, ages, sex, birth order, and even personalities of each one, plus each of us as a couple are uncannily alike.)  But she in a busy stage of life herself and still without enough distance from those young years to garner enough perspective.

So now I'm on the lookout for a mentor for myself, someone to sit with me, share with me, and help me fill up so that I can pour out into those women I am leading.