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.
Day 3 of Lent {...plain old ordinary supernatural things...}
All manner of things can start fires. The spark of inspiration is all around - so why do we sometimes not feel inspired at all?
There are pictures and there are paintings, and then there is that ineffable thing that we human beings call "inspiration". For me, the simplest most ordinary thing can hit me fresh and in the best way - this is when laundry leads to letter writing, or dirty coffee tables become a poem.
When a work of art is God-breathed, it somehow speaks to us. A little song can carry you through an otherwise monotonous day. A picture can tell a story that gives you a new thought, and the new thought enables you to lay down a tired old way of thinking. That is the least that image can do. It can also change something so deep down inside as to be fundamental.
It’s not just the seeing of a picture that is more than a picture…the act of painting a picture can unlock a fresh way of being in the world that the artist herself needed to discover. In fact, you can't have one without the other. We are not changed by a picture, unless the painter was changed by what she saw first. A painter is a seer of sorts, and a saint of sorts - a painter must be one who has inner vision. That vision - that inspiration - that ineffable thing that is more than what it seems to be...
...it was down there, in the artist’s heart all along, waiting to surprise even her. And here comes the challenge of Lent, 2021. Ordinary living can disguise or discover that inner vision. The details of the every day can conceal or reveal. The painter has to find the courage and discipline to see past it all, pick up her paintbrush, and completely inhabit another space.
While others buy and sell and succeed and go to Hawaii or Italy (for inspiration) and wear busy like a badge of significance.
Let this year’s Lenten season be like good poetry. Poetry takes something as ordinary as a walk around the block, and yet the poet sees a deeper vision. She uses the power of her words to inhabit another space. The poet, with her eye for the extraordinary hidden inside the ordinary, can turn that fleeting moment into permanent beauty. The painter can do the same thing with that same walk around the block, or a flower or an apple or a child sleeping, or the season of Lent.
It’s both a delight and a discipline. It’s the discipline of delight.
Poets and painters and artful practitioners of Lent must all add to their faith the virtue of action, and have eyes to see the beauty of the commonplace, and an unquenchable ache to make it last.
Below you will find an audio/visual version of this post. I hope you enjoy.