Day 30 of Lent {and a conversation with a friend}
I hope you have women in your life who have a walk in the Spirit.
Have you ever had relationships in your life where your perspective was muddled? Where your thinking goes this way and that, and your view of yourself within the context of that muddled relationship just isn’t true to your design? There exist people in this world who, though not maliciously and not by conscious design, are subversive. They prefer you to be muddled. Because then they can attempt to insert their agenda onto your calling, and distract you from your highest work with their relational shenanigans. And those people will often want to draw near to a person with a clear calling. They want inside your inner circle, but if and when they get there, they act out when things don’t go their way.
Anyhoo.
In one hour flat, I had a conversation with a friend and she cut straight to the chase and dispensed with chit chat and also honored the living daylights out of me, and let me know in the clearest terms possible that she could sense that there had been women in my past who maybe started out in friendship and honor but allowed a spiritual enemy or other people to influence their perspective, and those relationships ended up being something I was meant to leave.
I knew that part already. That was not anything I have not already learned. BUT.
But not just leave. I was meant to learn a lesson.
I’m meant to have an ability to discern when these things are in play, and never make time for it again.
My Lord. (That’s no euphemism. I’m talking to Him, right now, right here!)
I marveled at the clarity that cut through some fog I’d been under concerning some very present issues (not in my church, hallelujah…these issues are completely, totally outside my church) and I hung up the phone with an uncomplicated, precise plan of action that came to me of its own accord. My friend didn’t script it, whatsoever.
That’s what relationships with women who have a walk in the Spirit should look like.
She’s a new friend, and without knowing a single detail about my past, told me explicitly that those women in my past who failed to honor the relationship have lost out on something of immense value. And she considers their loss to be her gain, and thinks herself to have inherited their blessing, and she’s thrilled to take it.
It was the sort of conversation that, even though I am completely healed of every bit of trauma from this past season, when we were done talking, I had to wash my face.
I’m telling you, God has been utterly faithful to bring women like this, young and old, out of nowhere. Out of the woodwork. At least six of them (interestingly, DOUBLE the number of my loss….wow….) Some of these fire-breathing women are local to me, some within my church who have just stepped up to speak life to me constantly, some of them in other parts of the USA, and a few in the nations of the world.
Lest you think everything in this conversation was all rainbows and butterflies and honoring of me, you need to know, I also got off the phone with a crystal clear idea of exactly where I needed to repent and change my mind.
And now, I have a phone call to make, myself.
Oh, I hope you have friends who are filled with the Holy Ghost!
Day 4 of Lent {...and a clear challenge...}
The Bible tells me, Sheila Atchley, that I have been given “the gift of righteousness”.
So.
(….?…?…?….)
So what? What does that even mean? How does it apply to my life as a woman “in the middle”?
The word “righteous” means this: “The state of one as (s)he ought to be, the condition of acceptable to God.”
Ermagerd. This is huge. This deeply affects both my destiny and my day, come midlife.
I have know many women in years past who, between the age of about 45 to 55, had some version of a mid-life crises. This always involved an effort to re-create themselves. Coupled with the need to invent a false self, there came also an unhealthy sense of entitlement that made them decide to change it up and leave fine jobs, fine churches, fine friendships, and sometimes even a good marriage - finding fault with all, and thinking they had lived long enough to have "earned" the right to do what they (thought they) wanted to do.
It is precisely at those two points - reinvention and entitlement - that the Gospel could have spared them so much pain.
I feel their pain. I miss the women these ones used to be, before storms made their soul unwell. I miss the women they were before each of them essentially did away with that person because she didn’t measure up in some way. I miss the women they were before they decided that others close to them didn’t measure up to their standard, either. And that’s not judgement. It’s just fact.
I do have the gift of hindsight in this. I can look back over decades and see that it is so. This fact doesn’t nullify the grace of God. Rather, it makes grace all the more urgent. We…me…they…everyone who their actions affected…must set sentiment and nostalgia aside and deal with facts. Life goes on, and the gravity of our choices only serve to magnify the need for full redemption.
Who they all were was lovely and who they were becoming could have been even more amazing, had they had the courage to become more of who they already were, but wiser….and not try to become someone they wish they were. Instead of becoming more fully themselves, they began to become more like some woman on some blog, or a wellness expert they met in a Norwex meeting (not cracking on Norwex), or someone with a podcast, or someone on Ista.
I seriously hate the crap out of social media for this. (And no, the irony of saying this on social media is not lost on me, not one bit.)
It has never failed to grieve me when I see yet another dear one either silently implode....or become a caricature of herself, in an attempt at a midlife reinvention.
Healthy self development is great. Trying new and different things is wonderful...but those things are wonderful all the time. Developing our true gifts, having new experiences and attempting new things should be a way of life at every age, in every season. Self help…sudden new this, that, and another thing…should never be what we resort to, in order to heal a soul that has become unwell.
Because of Jesus, (if you are a follower of His), you already are who you ought to be, in a condition of being fully delighted in and accepted by God. This is not based on your talents, abilities, zip code, the car you drive, whether you are single and loving it, single and hating it, it is not based on who you are married to, what he does for a living, what you do for a living, your looks, your weight, your diet, your exercise, whether your womb is fertile or infertile, whether your kids are all high achievers, or your bank account. Your righteousness - your condition of being beautifully and exactly as you ought to be - is yours as a gift. Christ died to give it to you.
This eliminates the need to resort to change for the sake of change. Who you were made to be will do quite nicely. In fact, God never forgets about, or relents on, your original design.
(So help me, if you don’t go back and read that last sentence one more time, I might show up at your house to talk about it.)
Who a woman is, and what God requires of her, in terms of her gifts and the call of God on her life, and the process He has designed to bring that forth, is something God never repents of. (Please be thinking of the female counterpart to Jonah, and don’t be that girl! Don’t be “Jo-annah” who runs from her original design and her process! You’ll know if you are her, if you find yourself in a dark “belly-of-the-whale” kind of a place.)
God never takes it back....He never retracts who He wired you to be. No woman, I don't care who she is, can re-make herself. Yet so many women, at precisely the point of middle age, suddenly want to trade in who they were made to be, in order to become who they were not made to be. (Men, too...again, exhibit “Jonah”.)
Middle age IS a time of becoming...becoming more, and more wisely artistic, if you are artistic. Becoming more, and more wisely a singer, if a song is what everyone keeps asking of you. Becoming more and more wisely a writer, if your words are already setting hearts on fire. Becoming more, and more wisely a sculptor, if you’ve been carving on wood and chiseling stone in ways that bless people. Becoming more, and more wisely passionate, if you always have believed strongly. Becoming more, and more beautifully, skillfully, and wisely a teacher of children, if you've taught children off and on all your life. Becoming more and more wisely an instructor of adults, if that has always been your thing. Becoming more, and more wisely a leader, if others have tended to follow you. More and more wisely merciful, if mercy is your gift. More and more wisely linear and logical and organized, if that (oh glory be, will you please be my friend??) describes you.
Not a new version of you....a more, and more beautiful, and more wise you. More and better and wiser and sweeter and more compassionate.
I challenge you to spend 40 days (Lent is the 40 day season before Easter) leaning into accepting your design, and loving who you actually are, and what is actually yours, beneath all the trappings of life.
For you to take 40 days to sit still, and allow this becoming to emerge....however slowly...would take the kind of discipline that a Lenten season could facilitate and structure and encourage.
Warning: You can ignore me. I’m not the boss of you. But you need to know that it is far easier to succumb to discontentment and get the implants, or the cool car, or the McMansion, or the flock of guineas and Nubian goats...or leave your husband, your career, your church, yourself...hell - I mean heck - just leave it all behind. Anything to relieve the feeling of panic or anger, anything to avoid the sameness of boredom, anything to keep from having to humble yourself and adjust.
Anything but face the sadness of a hope long deferred.
BUT. But I believe for better than that, for you!
In the words of the great Apostle:
“Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation.”
Be patient, beautiful middle age (or any age) friend. You are as you ought to be, as sheer, lovely gift. My prayer is that you never find yourself wishing you could exchange your beautiful gifts for someone elses.
Parting words of wisdom: Never make a rash decision. And never leave anything offended....not a friendship or a church or even a party. Find the courage to take joy, and then cultivate creative continuity.
Find the courage to hold your holy ground! You are still becoming!
You are already as you ought to be, and you will yet become more of the woman you were originally designed to be.