Every Woman Has Something to Receive and Something to Offer
On discovering you were never just a student
"And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." (2 Timothy 2:2)
She came in thinking she had the least to offer.
Most of them do.
They arrive hungry—for depth, for community, for something they can't quite name—and somewhere underneath the hunger is a quiet conviction that they are mostly there to receive. That the women around them probably have more.
And then something happens.
Someone across the table leans in when she speaks. Listens. Receives something from her. And she looks up—surprised, a little uncertain—as if she's not sure she heard correctly.
You mean that landed for you?
It did. And it keeps happening. The woman who arrived thinking she was the least equipped discovers that what she carries—her story, her experience, her particular way of seeing—is exactly what someone else in the room needed.
By the end of the year she has come to care deeply about women she didn't know twelve months ago. Women who are now sisters, not strangers.
I've watched it happen in ways I couldn't have scripted.
Two women came in convinced their stories were completely different. Underneath the surface they discovered they had walked through a common season—and walked through it with Jesus in strikingly parallel ways. They began to receive from each other in ways that were significant. Not because someone orchestrated it. Because two women were willing to be known.
Then there was the youngest woman in the group. She arrived uncertain about what she had to give. It didn't take long before her slightly older sisters were regularly receiving from her. No competition. No hierarchy. Just the delightful surprise of discovering that the youngest woman at the table had something the oldest ones needed.
Old and young. Introverted and extroverted. Different wounds and similar seasons. A living example of the body of Christ functioning the way it was designed to.
What I didn't fully understand going in was what a year actually contains.
Not just sessions. Not just insights. Seasons.
One woman began the year in the grief of infertility and ended it in the joy of her first pregnancy. We celebrated with her—not as acquaintances who had heard good news, but as women who had been with her in the waiting. I never would have known her otherwise. I never would have been part of that story.
That happened over Zoom.
Most women assume that kind of depth requires in-person proximity. It doesn't. What it requires is a covenant, a consistency, and a willingness to show up and be known—month after month, through whatever the year holds. The monthly group Zoom and the monthly 1:1 let time do its work. They let trust build slowly the way it's supposed to.
I missed the opening retreat of my own mentoring year. By the time the year ended I had journeyed through seasons with women I had never met in person. The intimacy wasn't less because it happened over a screen. It was real because we had been faithful to show up for each other over time.
That's what a year does. That's what no weekend can replicate.
Nobody is above or below in 4th Gen. We all have something to give and something to receive—if we will but believe what he says about us and exercise our courage in Christ.
You are not just a student. You were never just a student.
The woman who thinks she has the least to offer is often the one the group has been waiting for. Her story—the one she has been dismissing as ordinary, as too messy to be useful—is often exactly what someone else in the room needs to hear. Not the polished version. The real one.
You came hungry. That's good. Hunger is what brings you in.
But you also came carrying something. And by the end of the year you'll know what it is.
We can't not grow.
If something in this is stirring something in you, I'd love to hear from you. Reach me at [email protected] — and my book, You Were Made for This, is coming soon at runwithhorses.org.
