If You’ve Left, Now is the Time to Return

There’s something Biblical about returning.

Not just to a place, but to a posture. Not to pretend nothing ever happened, but to come back to what we first loved, and find that we are wiser, even though wounded.

Many in midlife have wandered, willingly or not, from the structures and stories of our early faith. We’ve had hard losses and asked hard questions.

Some have quietly deconstructed. Others have loudly walked away and stood outside the door of the church and said, “I’m not sure you’re still for me.” Some have walked away from particular churches, and now there has been so much water passed under the bridge, so to speak, they cannot imagine coming back.

But what if midlife is the precise moment we’re meant to turn, not away from church, or even a church, but toward it again?

Not to the church of our childhood, all paper bulletins and pretend smiles. Not to a church that is comfortable and calm. And not to a church that demands production or performance.

But rather, to a real, rooted, ancient Church. To wind, fire, and the disconcerting assurance that tells the world, “These people are not drunk, at least not like YOU think…”

There is even now a re-membering, a bringing back together, of things we’ve forgotten. There is a re-membering of the church, the kind that can survive plagues, persecutions, midlife crises, and modern distractions.

The bride still carries the wisdom of the ages in her bones.

What if returning to the church is not regression, but the radical act of obedient re-integration?

Wild Sage, by Sheila Atchley

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it means to age well.

I am busy living, in real time, the truth that tells me that my God satisfies me with good things, and thus my youth is renewed “like the eagle”. (Ps. 103: 5)

(The Preacher and I still date…)

The world ages quietly, with shrinking significance as they grow silver-haired. But I don’t believe that’s what the Lord intends for His daughters. No, I believe we’re invited to become something far more mysterious and marvelous—something I am calling a “wild sage.”

I recently read that at one time, elders were thought of as being “weird” - or, “those with one foot in daily life and one foot in the otherworld.”

Because that language is equal parts poetic, comic, and mystic (all of those are my jam), my spirit leapt with recognition. Yes! That’s exactly how it should feel to walk with Jesus deeper and longer into this life:

one foot planted in the chaos of the now, the other planted in eternity.

(my rendering of The Trinity…)

The ancient word used was weird—not in the recent political sense—but in its original, sacred meaning: one who is entwined with destiny and attuned to the unseen. In Norse myth as well as in Shakespeare, the Weird Sisters are keepers of fate, the midwives of time and timelessness.

But in the Kingdom of God, I see my own version of the weird and the wonderful: prophets in camel’s hair, and wild-eyed women like old Anna the prophetess. I see widows who steward sacred oil (“…gather ye vessels…”), and grandmothers who pass down holy fire.

To be weird enough to be wise is, I believe, to accept a strange shaping of our inner life by the hand of God.

It’s to allow Him to use our lived experiences, personal aesthetic, artistic drive, our sorrows, and our sanctified imaginations to make us into bridges — older women with the ability to connect the seen and the unseen, the young and the old, the temporal and the eternal.

Bridges, as opposed to barges. I have met too many women who become barges in midlife. They are rather suddenly offended and upended and unmoored, floating from place to place, for what they can onboard to themselves, instead of what they can leave behind.

I. do. not. want. to. be. a. barge. I want to be a bridge!

This weird, wild bridge anointing is not for the faint of heart. But neither is it optional for those of us who feel the weight and wonder of eldership pressing on our shoulders like a mantle, and resting upon our heads like a crown.

This world doesn’t need more “normal.” Normal is just another word for numbed.

Wild sages are meant to be set apart—peculiar people, Scripture says. We are meant to speak of things that cannot be seen but are more real than what is. We are meant to remind the despairing of beauty, to summon imagination and insight in an age addicted to algorithmic answers.

A wild sage is not rebellious for the sake of being contrarian. She is rebellious in the way the great apostle Paul was—a holy defiance against dead systems and surface living. She is grounded—deeply connected to the real responsibilities of life— while her heart is tethered to a kingdom not built by human hands.

To live this way is to carry mystery in our bones, to speak in parables, to laugh at the days to come…and to weep over the wounds of the world. It is to be out of step with culture and in sync with eternity.

I want to be that kind of weird. I want to be a wild old woman, always making room for the miraculous while walking deftly in the mundane, loving what is hers.

I want to be the woman whose life says: “I have tasted and I have seen.” I hope to help shepherd an army of women safely to the outer edges of their wonder. I hope to be weird enough to be wise, wild enough to be useful, and rooted enough to be trusted.

Cheers to those of us pushing 60 or 70 years old:

“May our weirdness be not just tolerated—but treasured. May we have the unmistakable fragrance of Christ and wild sage…a life touched by the Spirit.”