There is no one around; the touch of the invisible swooshing rushes across your face, awakening you from your profound, wandering thoughts. Desires well up within you. Every young woman has a craving in her life to be connected to others, loved for all that she is and even for what she is not.

You might find that connection with the magazines lying on your kitchen table or maybe you seek it in unsatisfying friendships. Backgrounds, past experiences, and present trials all shape the way you fill this desire. However you are attempting to be connected, one thing is for sure of every woman – they were made to be connected with every generation of women.

Generations of women miss out on so much due to jealousy, envy, and comparison – older, wise words whisper safety and comfort in the midst of a turbulent young mother’s lies that scream back at her: “You’re not good enough; you will never get past this.”

A wise woman and missionary I look up to so much, Elisabeth Elliot, puts it like this in Let Me Be A Woman: “In order to learn what it means to be a woman we must start with the One who made her.” We cannot understand who we are as women, how to connect with other women, without first understanding who we were made to be.

How do we even go about getting connected with different generations of women? Relationships connect one another to a deeper sense of purpose; women have something to offer other women. Yet, engaging people requires great courage and vulnerability.

Women – yes, you! The ones running around chasing babies, the ones raising tyrannous teenagers, and the ones retiring this year ... wondering what is left in this life? You are wanted and your wisdom and insight is desired. You are in indispensable piece of a bigger story than yourself.

With whom and with what are you connecting? Most, if not all, younger girls and women have met a woman they desire to grow up and be like one day – wise words exuberate from her mouth as she lives them out. She isn’t perfect, nor does she face any different trials than you. Desiring wisdom and guidance is not a wrong desire, but it has been misplaced as women create idols in the women or magazine models they wish to become.

How can that gap be bridged? How can the generations of women connect, disciple, and come alongside one another to turn envy into friendship and leadership? In what are you investing? A couple of questions to ask yourself to see if you are filling the “wise woman” gap with mediocre things when instead you could be filling them with life-giving relationship full of lasting wisdom:
– Where is my confidence rooted?
– What am I filling my life with when I feel envious, jealous, and simply not connected?

Generations of women, let us rise up and fill our lives with relationships that encourage and have a lasting impact. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be the woman I am today without the help of a lot of older, most definitely wiser women. I thank them for investing in me through the hardest times of my life. I walk forward in investing in my relationships because I know at the end of the day, this is what we are created for.