Pull Up a Chair

Start With a Woman, Not a Project

It sounds obvious, but it is remarkably easy to forget that the younger woman is a person before she is someone you can help. She has a personality, history, marriage, family, body, gifts, fears, preferences, financial realities, responsibilities, wounds, strengths, and relationship with Yehovah that existed before you entered the story. Good mentoring begins with curiosity about the actual woman rather than an assessment of how closely her life resembles the mentor’s idea of maturity. Older women can sometimes recognize genuine areas of growth and immediately make those areas the center of the relationship. The younger woman struggles with organization, so every conversation becomes household management. She has marital conflict, so the mentor begins treating the marriage as the primary curriculum. She lacks confidence in Scripture, so every interaction becomes a Bible lesson. Those things may need attention, but nobody wants to feel as though every conversation is secretly an evaluation. Sometimes Emily needs Rachel to teach her something. Sometimes she needs Rachel to ask how her week went and then laugh with her for forty minutes about something that has no measurable discipleship outcome whatsoever. Friendship gives instruction somewhere to live.

Yeshua taught constantly, but He also ate with people, traveled with disciples, attended a wedding, entered homes, asked questions, received hospitality, and shared ordinary life. His relationships were not casual, but neither were they clinical. Titus 2 mentoring should feel more like shared life than spiritual case management. The younger woman is not a before-picture awaiting the mentor’s after-picture. She is a woman Yehovah is already forming, and the older woman has been invited to participate in that work without confusing participation with ownership.

Listen First, Then Help Her Think

Proverbs 18:13 says, “He who gives answer before he hears, that is folly and shame to him.” That verse should perhaps be printed on every mentoring workbook before page one. Experience creates speed. After decades of marriage, parenting, household life, work, ministry, conflict, illness, financial decisions, and human beings behaving like human beings, older women begin recognizing patterns quickly. This is valuable. It can also become dangerous if pattern recognition turns into assumption. A younger woman says, “My husband and I keep arguing about money,” and the mentor already has a budgeting lecture prepared, but perhaps the money is not actually the central issue. Maybe they have different expectations about decision-making. Maybe one spouse is frightened because of childhood poverty. Maybe income has changed. Maybe there is secrecy. Maybe there is simple disorganization. Maybe both people are exhausted and nobody knows exactly what is in the checking account. Those situations may all sound like money problems in the first sentence, but wise counsel will look very different once the actual problem is understood. The same is true of parenting, friendship, faith, health, work, and household life. “I cannot keep up with my house” may mean she needs systems, but it may also mean she has a newborn, anemia, depression, an unreasonable standard, five children, an injured spouse, a new job, or a family that expects one woman to perform the labor of several competent adults. Listening prevents us from offering spiritually impressive solutions to problems nobody actually has.

Good mentoring therefore involves questions, not merely answers. Proverbs 20:5 says that counsel in a person’s heart is like deep water and that a person of understanding draws it out. That may sound like, “What do you think is happening?” “What have you already tried?” “What are you afraid will happen if you say no?” “What does your husband think the problem is?” “What part of this is actually within your control?” “What does Scripture clearly require here?” “What are you assuming?” “When did this start?” “What would you tell a friend in the same situation?” Sometimes the wisest question is simply, “Do you want me to listen right now, or would you like help thinking through solutions?” That sentence may save entire friendships because sometimes a woman needs counsel and sometimes she needs to say, “This happened and it hurt,” without somebody immediately rolling out a corrective action plan. Questions also protect the younger woman from dependence because they teach her how to reason. If every problem is solved by the mentor saying, “Here is what you should do,” she may become very good at asking her mentor and not much better at discernment. If the mentor instead teaches her to ask, “What principles apply? What options do I see? What consequences are likely? What does Scripture say? What counsel have I received? What do I believe is wise?” then eventually those questions become part of the younger woman’s own thinking.

Some Problems Need Scripture. Some Need Sleep. Some Need a Doctor.

There is a peculiar temptation in spiritual relationships to make every problem sound more theological than it is. The woman is overwhelmed, so perhaps she needs a teaching on surrender. Maybe. She may also need to stop volunteering for three things, order groceries online, ask her teenager to do laundry, and go to bed before midnight. Some problems are theological. Some are emotional. Some are relational. Some are medical. Some are logistical. Wisdom learns to recognize the category. Titus 2 itself is wonderfully practical. Older women are told to train younger women in areas involving love, self-control, household faithfulness, goodness, and family life. This is not abstract discipleship floating several feet above the kitchen floor. An older woman may teach a younger woman how to read Scripture and also how to make three inexpensive dinners when money is tight. She may explain a passage and then show her how to create a family calendar. She may help her think through forgiveness and then help her prepare for a difficult but kind conversation with her husband. She may say, “I think you need to pray,” and also, “I think you need to call the doctor.” Those statements are not enemies.

The spiritual and practical belong together because human beings do not live in separate compartments. Hunger affects patience. Sleep affects perspective. Financial disorganization affects marriage. Chronic pain affects capacity. Friendship affects resilience. Household systems affect whether Shabbat preparation feels peaceful or resembles a small-scale emergency-management exercise. Helping a woman live wisely in the life Yehovah actually gave her is profoundly biblical, but a mature woman also knows when a problem exceeds her competence. If a younger woman is experiencing severe depression, an eating disorder, persistent medical symptoms, trauma responses, suicidal thinking, addiction, complicated legal issues, serious financial problems, or another issue requiring specialized care, the mentor should not attempt to become a professional through enthusiasm. She can stay with her, pray, help find appropriate care, sit in the waiting room, make dinner, help organize questions for an appointment, and remind her that seeking qualified help is not spiritual failure. But she does not need to diagnose her because she watched a video about hormones last Tuesday. The same principle applies to complicated marital situations. Ordinary disagreements and communication problems may be appropriate mentoring topics; violence, coercive control, credible threats, and serious abuse require a different level of care and safety consideration. Knowing when to refer is not failure. It is wisdom.

Let Her See How Wisdom Was Learned

One of the easiest ways older women accidentally intimidate younger women is by showing only mature competence. The meal appears. The household runs. The marriage has decades behind it. Scripture is familiar. The older woman answers questions calmly. The younger woman sees the finished product and assumes the mentor simply is this way. What she cannot see are the years of trial, failure, learning, repentance, burned dinners, budget mistakes, parenting misjudgments, theological corrections, awkward conversations, forgotten appointments, and household systems built only after the absence of a system created enough chaos to inspire reform. Tell her. Not every detail; mentoring does not require turning your life inside out. But let younger women know wisdom usually has a history. “I learned to communicate clearly because I spent years expecting people to read my mind.” “I started planning meals because I was tired of standing in the kitchen at five o’clock experiencing existential despair beside frozen chicken.” “I became careful about tradition because I discovered I had repeated things I could not actually show from Scripture.” “I learned to apologize to my children because there were times I should have done it much sooner.” These admissions transform wisdom from a mysterious personality trait into something learnable.

This is also why our failures can be useful when they are offered carefully. The goal is not to make younger women carry our regrets or recreate our younger selves through somebody else’s decisions. A woman who regrets leaving the workforce should not automatically tell every younger mother to keep a career; a woman who regrets working too much should not automatically tell every younger mother to stay home. The useful question is, What principle did my experience teach me? Perhaps it was make intentional decisions instead of drifting, protect time with your children, do not disappear, consider long-term finances, develop useful skills, or do not let other people’s expectations make the decision for you. When we identify the principle beneath the regret, our stories become gifts instead of prophecies. Show her the road, not merely the destination, and do not insist that her road must contain the same potholes.

Tell the Truth Without Making Her Small

Mentorship that never includes correction eventually becomes supportive companionship, and supportive companionship is wonderful, but Titus 2 speaks about training. Training sometimes requires saying that something is unwise, unhealthy, or sinful. Galatians 6:1 instructs spiritually mature believers to restore someone caught in wrongdoing in a spirit of gentleness while watching themselves carefully. The word restore matters because correction is not a performance in which the mentor demonstrates superior judgment. It is meant to help another person return to what is right, which means dignity should survive the conversation. An older woman can say, “I think you were wrong,” without saying, “What kind of woman does something like that?” She can say, “The way you spoke to him was disrespectful,” without turning the younger woman into a disrespectful woman as an identity. She can say, “I understand why you are angry, but bitterness is beginning to shape what you are doing,” without humiliating her for being hurt. She can say, “I cannot show you that from Scripture,” without making her feel stupid for believing what she was taught. Shame says, “You are the problem.” Correction says, “This needs to change.” One crushes dignity; the other calls a woman toward wisdom.

Wisdom also knows that noticing something does not obligate you to correct it. Age has an unfortunate side effect: you begin noticing things. You know where certain choices often lead. You can see inefficient systems, questionable parenting decisions, avoidable marital habits, strange financial priorities, and household arrangements you would not personally select if offered several gift cards and an afternoon to redesign the situation. This does not mean every observation needs to become counsel. Not every imperfect decision is a moral crisis. Not every inefficient household system requires intervention. Not every stylistic difference is an opportunity for discipleship. Ask yourself, Is this sin? Is this dangerous? Is she asking for advice? Is this likely to cause meaningful harm? Is there a biblical principle I genuinely need to help her see, or am I uncomfortable because she is doing it differently? Those questions can prevent mentoring from becoming an endless stream of micro-corrections that leaves the younger woman feeling perpetually inspected. If every cup in her cabinet becomes a teaching opportunity, she may eventually stop inviting you into the kitchen. Reasonable.

When correction is needed, privacy matters too. Matthew 18:15 begins the process of addressing sin with a private conversation. That passage has its own specific context, but the wisdom of protecting dignity whenever possible carries naturally into mentoring. If a younger woman says something mistaken in a group, not every error requires an immediate public theological duel. If others could genuinely be harmed by leaving something unaddressed, clarification may be necessary, but often the wiser route is to speak afterward: “Can I mention something from our conversation?” Correction works best when the woman receiving it knows the woman speaking is for her, and that kind of trust is built long before the difficult conversation begins.

Make It Safe Enough for Reality

If a younger woman believes every mistake will become evidence against her, she will show you the version of her life she thinks you approve of. The children are doing well. The marriage is fine. Bible study is consistent. The household is manageable. Shabbat preparation is peaceful. Everyone is apparently eating vegetables voluntarily. Congratulations. You are now mentoring fiction.

Real discipleship requires enough safety for reality. That does not mean approving everything. It means the younger woman knows she can tell the truth without losing your affection. She can say, “I yelled at my child.” “I am angry with my husband.” “I haven’t opened my Bible all week.” “I made a terrible financial decision.” “I’m jealous.” “I am struggling with something I’m ashamed of.” The mentor can take the issue seriously without reacting as though the woman has personally set fire to the book of Proverbs. Grace makes truth easier to tell.

That safety also requires confidentiality. Titus 2 specifically warns older women against slander, and that becomes enormously important when younger women entrust them with information about marriages, children, finances, faith struggles, family conflict, health concerns, mistakes, fears, and private grief. Access to someone’s vulnerability is a responsibility, not conversational material. The mentor should assume private information remains private unless there is a compelling safety or legal reason otherwise. She should not casually tell her husband because we tell each other everything, share it with another friend because that friend has such good insight, or transform it into an anonymous prayer request containing enough identifying detail that everybody within twelve miles can solve the mystery. “I won’t say who, but she has three children, her husband works nights, they just bought the blue house beside the Johnsons, and she could really use prayer.” We have not preserved confidentiality. We have converted gossip into a group puzzle.

Prayer does not make careless information-sharing holy. A mature woman knows how to ask, “Would you like me to ask a few women to pray? What are you comfortable with me telling them?” That protects the younger woman’s ownership of her story while still inviting community. There are genuine exceptions where danger, abuse, threats of harm, mandatory reporting obligations, or other serious concerns require appropriate involvement, but ordinary mentoring should be marked by discretion. A woman whose mouth cannot hold another woman’s story is not ready to hold significant influence in her life.

You Are Not Her Holy Spirit

Mentors sometimes become controlling for understandable reasons. You care about her. You can see consequences she cannot. You have walked down the road she is considering and know there is a pothole the approximate size of a small nation. You explain your concern. She listens. Then she chooses differently. This is where mentoring becomes a test of the older woman too. You may advise. You may warn. You may say, “I think this is unwise.” If Scripture clearly identifies the issue as sin, you may say so plainly. But another adult woman remains responsible before Yehovah for her own decisions. The mentor is not granted spiritual ownership because she has more experience.

This becomes especially important when the issue is not a clear biblical command. If you believe she should take one job and she chooses another, that is not rebellion against mentoring. If you think her child would benefit from a different school and she disagrees, she has not rejected wisdom merely because she reached another conclusion. If you would organize the household differently, celebrate the glorious fact that nobody has appointed you Secretary of Cabinets. A healthy mentor can disagree without withdrawing affection. That freedom keeps counsel from becoming control.

For the same reason, successful mentoring cannot be measured by how often the younger woman follows your advice. Sometimes she will take it and discover it was helpful. Sometimes she will adapt it. Sometimes she will ignore it and learn something the difficult way. Sometimes she will ignore it and eventually discover that she was right because you did not understand some part of her circumstances. This possibility is mildly inconvenient for older-woman pride but excellent for humility. Your responsibility is to offer truthful, thoughtful, appropriately weighted counsel. Her responsibility is to weigh it before Yehovah. The goal is not, She always does what I tell her. The goal is, She increasingly knows how to make wise decisions.

Do Not Become Her Entire Community

An unhealthy mentor can become territorial. She feels threatened when the younger woman seeks advice elsewhere, studies with another woman, develops another friendship, or discovers someone with expertise the mentor does not possess. Healthy discipleship should do the opposite. Encourage her to learn from other faithful women. If someone has navigated a season you have not, introduce them. If another woman knows much more about a subject, celebrate that resource. If the younger woman needs professional expertise, help her find it. The Body is a body precisely because no single person carries every gift, skill, perspective, or experience. A good mentor expands a younger woman’s wise community rather than narrowing it around herself.

This also means the relationship must survive disagreement. If mentorship works only while the younger woman agrees, it is not mentorship; it is compliance with refreshments. She should be able to say, “I read that passage differently,” “I don’t think that system would work for our family,” or “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I think I’m going to make another choice.” You may continue thinking she is wrong. You may explain why. But disagreement should not threaten affection. In fact, this becomes increasingly important as the younger woman grows. She begins studying deeply, developing expertise, gaining confidence, recognizing what she believes and why, and no longer asking permission disguised as advice. Wonderful. That was the assignment. Make disciples, not dependents.

Invite Her Into Real Life

Mentoring does not need to happen primarily in formal meetings. Invite her over. Let her bring the children. Make lunch. Fold laundry while you talk if laundry needs folding. Go for a walk. Meet at the grocery store. Plant something. Cook together. Sit on the porch. Study Scripture. Help with a project. Let mentoring happen where life is already taking place. This lowers the pressure on both women. The mentor does not need to prepare a profound lesson every time, and the younger woman does not need to arrive with a spiritually impressive question. Relationship develops through repetition.

There is something profoundly formative about seeing how another woman lives without performance. You notice what she does when the recipe fails, how she speaks about her husband when he is not present, whether she panics when the schedule changes, whether she apologizes, whether she rests, whether she can laugh at herself, and whether Scripture is genuinely part of her life or primarily something she teaches. A woman may learn hospitality because you invite her into an imperfect house and feed her soup. She may learn boundaries because you say, “I would love to help, but I cannot do that this week.” She may learn that mature women have unfinished laundry, use store-bought bread, occasionally feed people leftovers, and continue being beloved by Yehovah. Younger women already have enough access to curated perfection. They need access to faithful reality.

Pulling up a chair is therefore not merely metaphorical. Sometimes the table actually matters. The kitchen table has discipled a remarkable number of people without registration forms, matching workbooks, or a carefully branded twelve-week program. Hospitality does not require performance. Move the paperwork. Make the coffee. Let the children be noisy in the next room. If the house is not a biohazard, civilization will continue.

Teach Her to Notice Her Own Life

One of the greatest things an older woman can teach is observation. Instead of merely helping a younger woman solve the crisis of the week, help her begin noticing patterns. What repeatedly drains you? What repeatedly causes conflict? What keeps happening on Fridays? When do you lose patience? Which responsibilities truly belong to you and which have simply accumulated around you? What helps your marriage feel connected? What makes Bible study difficult? What signs tell you that you are approaching burnout? Patterns contain information. If every Friday feels frantic, perhaps Shabbat preparation needs to change. If every evening argument occurs before dinner, perhaps feed people before conducting diplomacy. If paperwork disappears repeatedly, build a landing place. If volunteering reliably produces resentment, perhaps guilt should no longer be permitted to manage the calendar. A mentor with years behind her can help a younger woman discover that many repeated problems are not evidence of defective character. Sometimes the system is broken. Tuesday, once again, may be involved.

She can also help the younger woman distinguish hard, unwise, and wrong, because younger women often collapse those categories. Marriage is hard, therefore something is wrong. Parenting is exhausting, therefore she must be failing. Bible study is inconsistent during a newborn season, therefore her faith is weak. A two-year-old is having a meltdown, therefore the parenting philosophy has collapsed. No. The child is two. Some things are difficult because they are difficult. Other things are genuinely unwise and need adjustment. Still others are actually sinful and require repentance. Wisdom learns to name the difference. The reverse matters too: something being common does not make it healthy. Constant exhaustion may be common. Contemptuous communication may be common. Mothers carrying every piece of household mental labor may be common. Women losing friendships and neglecting medical care may be common. Everybody does it is not evidence that it produces good fruit. The older woman has something precious to offer here because she has had time to watch patterns unfold. She can sometimes say the sentence every younger woman deserves to hear at least once: “I wish somebody had told me sooner.”

Know When to Talk and When to Simply Stay

There are situations in which advice is not the immediate need. A woman has lost a parent. A pregnancy ended. A frightening diagnosis arrived. A child is suffering. A marriage has broken in a way that cannot be repaired in one conversation. A dream has died. Do not rush to make meaning. Job’s friends did something profoundly wise before they began doing many foolish things: they sat with him because his suffering was very great. Romans 12:15 tells believers to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. It does not say, Weep with those who weep and immediately explain the spiritual lesson Yehovah is teaching through this experience. Sometimes presence is ministry. There may be a time for perspective later. Today may be the day for soup.

A mature woman is not frightened by another woman’s tears. She does not need to stop them, fix them, compare them to something harder she survived, or offer a verse as though Scripture is a bandage we place quickly enough to make grief disappear. She can say, “I am here.” Then she can actually stay. That is wisdom too.

And somewhere inside all of this, laughter belongs. Mentoring does not need to feel perpetually solemn because women are more than problems requiring counsel. They need stories, absurdity, movie quotes, inside jokes, and moments when nobody is improving anything. Proverbs 17:22 tells us a cheerful heart is good medicine, and life repeatedly confirms the principle. An older woman who can laugh at herself teaches a younger woman not to interpret every mistake as catastrophe. Yes, you forgot the appointment. Put it on the calendar and continue living. Yes, dinner burned. Humanity has survived. Yes, you sent the text to the wrong group. There may be consequences, but we will rebuild. Some situations require repentance, some require immediate action, and some simply require The Princess Bride: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Discerning which is which may be among the higher forms of maturity.

Make Disciples, Not Dependents

The healthiest mentoring relationship contains its own gradual release. At first, the younger woman may need more help thinking through decisions. Over time she begins recognizing principles herself. She asks fewer basic questions because she has learned how to study. She stops needing reassurance about every choice. She knows how to seek counsel from several wise people. She can hear an opinion without assuming it is a command. She can admit a mistake without collapsing. She can say, “I need to pray and think about that.” This is success. The mentor should not respond by manufacturing new ways to remain necessary. She should celebrate because biblical discipleship multiplies competence.

This is especially true in Scripture study. If every difficult question ends with “Let me ask my mentor,” something is missing. One of the greatest gifts an older woman can give is teaching the younger woman how to open Scripture herself. Let her watch the process. Who is speaking? Who is the audience? What happened before this? What is the larger argument? Is this a command, description, proverb, prophecy, or narrative? Are there related passages? What is explicit? What are we inferring? Are we importing a tradition into the text? Sometimes resist answering and ask, “What have you found?” Then study together. The result should not be a woman who says, “Rachel told me.” It should increasingly be a woman who says, “Let me show you what I found in Scripture.”

Eventually she may become more knowledgeable than you in some areas. Excellent. Perhaps she studies Hebrew deeply. Perhaps she becomes an extraordinary teacher. Perhaps she develops professional expertise. Perhaps she becomes a mother whose parenting wisdom teaches you something. Perhaps she invents a household system so efficient you briefly wonder whether the last thirty years have been a tragic waste of label makers. Celebrate her. A teacher who rejoices when the student becomes excellent has understood the assignment. The older woman still has something distinctive because she has lived longer, but younger women are not empty containers. They bring gifts, insights, questions, knowledge, enthusiasm, and perspectives older women may need. Both remain disciples of Yehovah.

Eventually, Move Over

Perhaps the deepest test of mentoring is whether the older woman can sincerely rejoice when the younger woman becomes a mature woman who does not resemble her. She may parent differently, organize differently, work differently, study differently, dress differently, structure her marriage differently, prepare Shabbat differently, develop different gifts, or reach different conclusions on interpretive questions where Scripture allows honest disagreement. Can you celebrate her faithfulness even when it does not look like yours? That is the fruit of everything we explored in Teach What Is Good, Not What Is Yours. Pulling up a chair means helping another woman become fully herself under Yehovah, not sanding away every difference until she matches the furniture. Yehovah does not need two of you. One has apparently been sufficient.

Then comes a beautiful moment. The older woman realizes the younger woman is no longer sitting only to receive. She is beginning to teach. Perhaps another young mother asks her a question. Perhaps she leads a study. Perhaps she notices a woman standing alone and invites her into the conversation. Perhaps she offers counsel that sounds familiar, not because she is parroting her mentor, but because wisdom has become her own. Move over. Make room for another chair. This is how Titus 2 becomes generational rather than merely relational. One woman teaches another woman who eventually teaches another. The wisdom is refined as it travels because each woman checks it against Scripture, adds experience, discards what was merely preference, and hands forward what is good. The table gets longer. That is the point.

Final Thought

Perhaps we have made mentoring harder than it needs to be because we imagine the older woman must arrive prepared to offer something profound. She needs a curriculum, a list of discussion questions, a carefully structured meeting schedule, and enough confidence to answer whatever the younger woman asks. Those things can be useful, but a woman can possess all of them and still fail to mentor well if the younger woman never feels known, heard, safe, respected, or free to become someone different from her teacher. The best mentors are not necessarily the women with the most answers. They are women who have become trustworthy with other people’s questions. They listen long enough to discover what is actually being asked. They do not panic when another woman admits failure. They can distinguish sin from immaturity, hardship from failure, preference from command, and a problem requiring wisdom from one requiring professional care. They know how to say, “I think you are wrong,” without making the woman feel worthless, and how to say, “I don’t know,” without feeling threatened by the limits of their knowledge. They tell their own stories without making those stories prophecy over somebody else’s future. They guard what is entrusted to them. They laugh. They feed people. They pray. They open Scripture. They know that sometimes the most spiritual thing they can recommend is repentance and sometimes it is eight hours of sleep. They understand that a woman may need a Bible study, a budget, a physician, a counselor, a chore chart, a walk, an apology, a casserole, or thirty uninterrupted minutes to cry, and wisdom does not become less biblical because it recognizes which one is actually required.

Most importantly, the mature mentor does not confuse being needed with being successful. That distinction matters because mentoring can feed something in the older woman too. It feels good when someone seeks our advice. It feels meaningful to be trusted. It is satisfying when another woman says, “I don’t know what I would do without you.” But if we are not careful, we can begin building relationships that quietly depend upon remaining necessary. Titus 2 points in the opposite direction. The younger woman should become stronger, wiser, more confident in Scripture, better at recognizing what Yehovah has said, better at asking questions, better at weighing counsel, better at identifying patterns, better at making decisions, better at accepting correction, better at admitting mistakes, and better at seeking help when she needs it. Eventually she should need fewer answers from you. That is not loss. That is harvest.

One day she may call and say, “I already looked up the passages we talked about, and I think I know what I need to do.” Smile. You helped teach her how to do that. One day she may tell you she disagrees with your interpretation and then explain her reasoning carefully from Scripture. Listen. You might still disagree, but you may also discover she saw something you did not. One day another woman may come to her with a question, and you may overhear her say, “Before I tell you what I think, tell me what happened.” There it is. She learned to listen. Perhaps later she will say, “Here is what Scripture clearly says. Here is the principle I see. Here is what experience taught me, but you need to think and pray about how that applies in your situation.” There it is again. She learned not to make herself the authority. Perhaps she will say, “I think you need someone with more expertise than I have, but I’ll help you find her.” She learned her limits. Perhaps she will hear something difficult, keep it private, bring dinner, sit beside someone who is grieving, or gently tell a woman she loves, “Sweetheart, I understand why you are angry, but what you are about to do is not wise.” She learned that love can tell the truth without shame.

Then one afternoon you may walk into a room and see her sitting at a table with another woman. There is coffee between them, probably cold, because apparently that is an unavoidable feature of women having meaningful conversations. Maybe there is cheesecake if civilization has progressed appropriately. You recognize the posture. The younger woman is talking, and the woman you once mentored is listening—not waiting to speak, but actually listening. Then she asks a question. She opens the Bible. She does not tell the woman what kind of life she should copy. She helps her think. She tells the truth. She leaves her dignity intact. Somewhere in that ordinary moment, without ceremony or announcement, another chair has been pulled up to the table.

That is Titus 2 working. Not because you created a woman who needed you, but because you helped form a woman capable of helping someone else. So make the coffee. Open the door. Let the children make noise in the next room. Ignore the laundry basket unless the two of you decide to fold it while you talk. Ask the question and hear the whole answer. Open Scripture. Share what you know and admit what you do not. Tell her where you failed. Correct her when love requires it. Guard her confidence. Help her find better help when the problem exceeds your wisdom. Laugh often enough that she does not mistake maturity for permanent solemnity. And when she becomes wise enough to no longer need your chair quite so often, do not pull it away. Move it over. There is another woman coming.

Don’t take my word for it… Open your Bible.