Applications Now Accepted

My last blog post was an honest one.  Not that any previous haven’t been honest...my last one just left me a little exposed.  It was honesty with my shield missing.  While I am not sure why I felt the need to post what initially began as personal processings, I did.  And it was freeing.  It was letting go of some false pretenses and shouting from, basically, my most public venting ground, “I’m not perfect!  In fact, I don’t even know if I’m even okay!  I don’t care if you know if it is the truth!”  It was, perhaps strangely, refreshing and revitalizing to have others text and message without solutions but with words that just basically said “me too”.  Like I wasn't alone.  And as if somehow in being honest and a little vulnerable, I had allowed others to do the same. 

That being said, I decided to be strangely honest again.  I, again, am not quite sure what posting this honesty will solve or if I really want it to accomplish anything.  And, tomorrow, I will probably regret it and the potential results but, for today, I am going to be bold.  [Bear with me through yet one more piece of following explanation...]

I have a couple key friends who challenge me. (You’re probably saying “great!  That’s what friends are for!” Correct.  But keep reading.)  They challenge me in ways that matter and encourage me to be about more and better and truer and all of those great things, but they also challenge the core of who I am.  And by challenge, I mean they do things like put up a fight against my Superman complex.  My desire to come in and save the day, to be a hero in your world when you need one the most.  I’ve come to grips, in small ways, with what it means to forgive Superman.  To forgive myself for when I can’t be everyone’s everything.  And my friends, knowing me, know that I will not easily let go of an opportunity to still act upon it.  It is part of who I am.  They don’t expect me to stop my superman complex or not rush in to save the day if at all I can. Now they just want me to be healthy about it. 

Their favorite question? It goes something like... “So, that’s fine, but who is your ‘Anika’?  Who is your superman?  Who is there like that for you?” 

I like to be rhetorical and say things like...  “You’re listening to me and you’re intentional right now, so...you?”  They have to give me at least some minor legitimacy points.  If they intend to be intentional in my life like that, they’re probably that day’s version of superman for me.  [I just chalked up my own score points, for the record.]

And yet, [here is where the next stage of honesty comes in; brace yourselves], if I am being truthful with them and myself, they aren’t enough.  Not always. 

I spent several hours talking to my best friend last week (far too late into the night and early morning hours I might add).  We started by venting a couple frustrations and I ended in an all-out ranting tirade of my life.  I wish I could say I was bemoaning world hunger and war and disease but it was far pettier a matter.  Kind of pathetic actually. And I went from rant to jealous tirade...because she made a comment about running a frustration [that had come up in our discussion] past her mentor. 

She runs a lot past me and I past her and there are not too many secrets we keep from each other...but she still has a mentor.  Someone older and wiser and grounded who knows her and knows enough of her story to be intentional.  Someone who seeks her out just to check in.  Who gives advice and counsel from a place removed from situations and her job and her immediate life based solely on what is known about her, about Jesus, about the world.  I was jealous.

I wanted one. 

Not a want like you see an awesome Crockpot on an infomercial and you consider how handy it would be and so you add it to your Christmas list in case your mom wants a great idea. You would probably use it if you had it around, after all.

No, a want that is almost more of a need.  It’s not.  Not really.  I can live without one.  But it is becoming a very real and deep desire.  Not a necessity but if I had a legit one, I feel as if I would probably question how I could live without them.  I’m at that stage in my life where I have to agree with my well-meaning friends.  I could use someone to be my ‘Anika’.  My superhero. Someone I could call on a bad day or ask to do coffee and know they would have sound advice or at least a listening ear.

My friend and I are pretty close in age, I being just a couple years older, and I trust her with a great deal and can rely on her listening ear and genuine advice but in my tirade I told her she didn’t cut it and explained why I needed more.  That I needed someone who had lived through more than I had.  Who could give advice based on life and experience.  Someone who was inside my life personally but an objective outsider to my life as a whole.  Someone I could come to grips with the fact that I could care about them and their life but for once it wouldn’t be an Anika investment or even a mutual I-feed-into-you/you-feed-into-me relationship.  Instead I would just accept the fact that this relationship would, to me, feel more one-sided...me on the receiving end.    

But I feel pretty stuck in the whole matter.  For as many young and younger people I’ve mentored for times and seasons over the years...I don’t know where to begin.  I, myself, have never actually had a mentor.  I’ve been the mentor but I really don’t know how this all works. Where does one find a mentor?  Do I send out a link to the website with the job description and let people know that applications are now available?  Do I find them or do they find me?  Should I ask for a resume and cover letter or just have them fill out the questionnaire? 

I have this list of extensive specifications (I’ve been told by peers it is fair but again, never done this.) which I feel like cancels out any I can think to be the willing and puts me into a realm of unknown which negates one of my specifics.  Sketch, I know, but true.  Hence the application (which I realize no one would actually fill out if I were to actually create it) seems like the best option.  (Can you Craig’sList something like this??).

I need someone (and when I say someone...I’m really saying someone female.  I guess I could have a guy mentor but something tells me my life would better be understood and communicated back to me by a chick) older and wiser.  Older is somewhat relative though also concrete (I’m 23, older is clearly nothing less than 24 although I would love a few more years than that, although not excessively more.  I need someone still relevant).  Wiser is a little more subjective.  And I need someone I have a connection to...I don’t want to build a relationship from the ground up so that when it gets legit and/or natural enough, mentorship can begin.  I need them outside my day-to-day life so that they can be subjective about my day-to-day life.  I need someone who will sit and listen to my life story from start to finish – potentially for hours – and possibly say little more than asking for clarifying questions or asking for more details as I got it all out...so they would have to have a base understanding of all the reasons I tick the way I do.  They need to love Jesus (given) because I can’t and won’t take life advice from someone who doesn’t but I also need someone who will challenge my relationship with Christ and feed the fact that I like to think intelligently about matters of faith and discuss things from a deeper end.  I need someone moderately accessible and someone I would feel comfortable calling with a question or asking to talk or to do coffee or texting saying “pray for me today – it’s rough”.  And I need someone who is willing to take the time on me.  Who sees me as worth the investment... 

Not a small list.  Not a small job description.  Applications aren’t actually available (of course) but I think I am on the lookout, and the prayout (that is a personal word I’ve created to describe when I begin to pray with intention about something), for that “someone”.  The someone who will be nothing more and nothing less than exactly the person God knows I need and whom He will place in my life not a second before or after the time I am ready accept it.  Yeah.  

*This might be as honest as life gets in my blog for a while.  So breathe easy, a sigh of relief perhaps. I’ll return to our normal programming soon.  It is just always a bit of a surprise if you’re going to endeavor towards my abandoned scrawls...