Dear Mommy Blogger,

First, I want to thank you with all sincerity for your love and care for your fellow young moms. There is, no doubt, a great need in these days to encourage women in their God-given calling of motherhood. The world devalues it in a million ways and it is essential that we counter those bold and marginalizing messages with biblical truth. Many of you are doing just that, and doing it with excellence. Your sites are beautiful and your words are edifying.

I am also fully aware that you are filling a very real void. Countless women from my generation are missing-in-action when it comes to living out the biblical command to mentor and disciple younger women. Sadly, this is nothing new. My one and only mentor, my precious mom, died when I was 27. I was in the beginning of my journey as a wife and mother. I deeply grieved that loss and spent many years looking for another godly, older woman to speak personally into my life. To my dismay, none were to be found. They were either not equipped, not willing, or unavailable.

With that sad reality, godly, seasoned authors became my impersonal mentors. I gladly drank in their every word and then worked hard to live out the biblical wisdom embodied by their writings.

I have been encouraged seeing a shift within the body of Christ as I’m witnessing a new resurgence of Titus 2 mentorship being carried out within the local church. We still have a long way to go, but we’re making progress. In the mean time, please pray for us. Seek us out. Invite us to speak into your life.

So, prolific mommy blogger, my heartfelt question for you, is this: right now and in this season of your life, are you sure this is how you are supposed to be spending your time?

From all indications, most of you are busy women — young wives with young children. I was in your season once (and, it was a long season for me). I know well the demands and challenges you face each and every day.

I also know that there are only so many hours in a day to do what God has called you to do in this crucial season of your life. The days may seem to be passing slowly but the years will fly by. In a blink of an eye your children will be grown and gone and you will be standing in your empty nest longing for those little years. How you choose to spend your time now will significantly impact the outcome of your marriage, children, and even grandchildren as well as your future impact on other women. Trust me, there are no do-overs. I sometimes wish there were.

Titus 2:4-5 spells out clearly that older women (like me) are called to instruct younger women (like you) to fill those precious 24 hours with the following multi-tasking, life-impacting, non-negotiable imperatives. These, in fact, are the beauty of the gospel profoundly expressed in real life.

Here they are:

“Love your husband”
This means having intentional, self-sacrificial quality time with your soulmate as you cultivate a rich, fulfilling life together. It means fulfilling your truly countercultural, but biblical, mandate to honor, esteem, and submit to the one you’ve been given to help. This commanded love is the fuel which propels you to carry out the vision for your family you have created in unity with your best friend. This kind of love causes you to find your identity as wife trumping your identity as mother. But even more importantly, your identity in Christ overarching all.

“Love your children”
This love is manifested through faithfully training and nurturing the souls entrusted to your care so you can fully enjoy them. It is done day in and day out — precept upon precept. This is not a worldly-wise kind of love that is sentimental, indulgent, or permissive — which is really no love at all. Rather, it is rooted and motivated in pleasing your heavenly father who has entrusted these eternal souls into your care for a short season. It is lavished for his pleasure, not for yours or theirs.

“Working diligently at home”
This is lived out as you daily manage your home and family — not someone else's. It is an opportunity to express your creativity and skills as you create a very real, warm, welcoming, well ordered haven. Your work at home is the powerful means used to create meaningful memories that leave behind a lasting legacy in the hearts of your family. This is truly a powerful ministry that requires time, presence, and sacrifice.

“Being self-controlled and pure”
Self-control is saying “NO” to urges your flesh longs for, as such online temptations as your social media connections and blog site long to steal away the hours of your day - making sure you forfeit irreplaceable family relationships for replaceable ones. Being self-controlled is saying “NO” to temptations that will compromise your effectiveness as a wife and mother.

Being pure speaks to being a one-man women, your heart and body belong to your husband, alone. Our husband should be our primary earthly relationship and need meeter. It's easy to let others or other things creep into our home to take our husband's place in our heart, it doesn't require another man!

“Being good and kind”
This beautiful pair of attributes are, in fact, part of the fruit of the spirit birthed and nourished through faithful time in God’s word, prayer, and yielding oneself to the power of the Holy Spirit.

“Submit to your own husband”
Probably the most challenging on the list, yet I would say it’s possibly the most important. This is the spirit of Philippians 2 - the quintessential living out of Christ-like love, trust, and faith. This does not happen magically. It is borne out of the beautiful process of sanctification that must be prayerfully cultivated, practiced, and yielded to. Faithfully living out this command will have a powerful impact on you and your entire family.

Scripture exhorts that each of these be faithfully lived out. Why?
In order to fulfill these commands you must first deeply value them and secondly you must be committed, like a good solider, to making sacrifices necessary to carrying them out. Faithfully living these is countercultural, but it is not for public viewing. It is a private, intentional, well planned daily investment that one day promises to be generously rewarded.

You are sowing now to reap later. You are laboring hard in this season that you might experience the reward of a great harvest in the next.

Mommy blogger, to write anything of substance and maintain a beautiful, well designed website takes thought, energy, effort, sacrifice…and if we can just cut to the chase: it takes a lot of time! To do that well, something has to give — it just does. We were made with limitations, and that is by design. We have all been given a stewardship of time and energy. How you choose to spend your God given resources has eternal ramifications. Your stewardship impacts future generations, for better or worse. This is also by design.

I believe that godly women are never too young to mentor. But real, biblical mentoring is an intimate life-on-life relationship. It is something that is private and real. It is seasonal, done as we have capacity. It is done organically, through relationships that God sovereignly brings our way, primarily in and through the church and, secondarily, our physical social circles. It is cultivated as we grow in our knowledge of the Word and daily live out those truths. It is tested, refined, and proven as we walk through seasons of sacrifice, pain, loss, and trials.

Frankly, a website is a poor substitute for this kind of mentoring relationship. In fact, you may not realize it, but your beautifully designed, well scripted blogs are potentially communicating a confusing, and often times harmful, message. You are communicating to the weary-worn mom, who barely has time to brush her teeth, that living a faithful Titus 2 life isn’t enough. It needs to be more profound, more stylish, more exciting, more public. Your message is very likely stirring dissatisfaction, discouragement, and discontentment in the hearts of women that you are trying to help - and women like me are left busily doing some heavy damage control in your wake.

May I humbly suggest that you take time to search your heart and consider your motivation in entering such a public arena. Is it to gain attention…to become significant? Are you posting a whitewashing of your life or is it an accurate reflection? Is it real or a mirage of what you hope to be true one day? Do your marriage, children, and home reflect the fruit of a well-lived Titus 2 life? And most importantly: at the end of the day who are your online words making much of? You or Christ?

Dear one, know this, if you are writing something of true biblical substance then you have placed yourself on the front lines of public scrutiny and spiritual warfare. Are you armed and ready for this battle? Do you have capacity in this season of life to wage this kind of cosmic war? How about your husband and young children? How might they fare?

To those who are using this public platform simply for making money, or merely as an outlet for entertaining musings or personal opinions, please be mindful of this sobering reality: each of us will be held accountable for every idle word spoken (and written). They potentially will have eternal ramifications. (Matt. 12:36-37)

My most heartfelt advice to you, beloved mommy blogger, is to wait. As James 4:1 admonishes: “let patience have its perfect work in you.” Your time for public advice and exhortations will come once your life testimony contains enough evidence to validate your words. But for now, live-out the truths you long to publicly write about that you might have something of real substance and weight to write later after your life has been tested and proven. I challenge you to do this for the sake of your precious family, for the sake of the women you write to, and ultimately for the sake of Christ. He is worthy!

Thank you for letting me share my heart.

Your sister-in-Christ,

Mary Robbins — your fellow ministry minded wife and mother who has waited until her mid-fifties, with 35 years of marriage and 32 years of mothering 8 children to make her thoughts and exhortations public.

Tags: mentoring, advice, guidance, beliefs, family, purpose, goals, discipleship, godliness, vision, worldliness, hope