Confessions of an Unemployed
Minister - Part Eight: Walking with a Friend
One of the most important parts of journeying through employment
transitions is having good friends who accompany you on the way. I am blessed
with several very good friends. Long before I started on this road of change, I
began a regular time of (almost) weekly walking, talking, sharing and praying
with an old friend. We meet and hike the chip trail around a local golf course.
We try to give each other about a half of the trail loop each, to confess
deeply, ask questions, counsel and absolve each other. There’s nothing that we cannot share.
There’s lament and laughter, empathy and encouragement. It’s a sacred peer
mentoring discipline that has helped me before, during, and (I hope) after this
sifting and shifting experience.
It’s important to have mentors, to intentionally seek out great
people of faith and wisdom whom one can look to for guidance and inspiration. I
have many of these. Some have been dead for decades or centuries, but I can
still read their books and glean from them regularly. Others are only a phone
call or email away. It’s also important to mentor others; to offer whatever
wisdom and faith one might have to those a little further behind on the way of
life and faith. I have had the privilege of enjoying that role in many people’s lives. But
there is another kind of mentoring that we need. That is to commit to
intentionally walk with friends through the stages of life and faith together.
When we were teenagers, I made a written covenant with another
friend. We put to paper a commitment to pray for each other daily, to encourage
each other in faith, to practically support one another in any way we could, to
never make a life decision without consulting the other, and to never speak
disparagingly of the other. That 36-year covenant still stands and this is
another way I regularly receive strength and courage to walk through this
process of change and growth. Peer friend mentors are a vital gift for the journey.
