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 2 of Lent. {making beauty out of ashes}
Yesterday was “Ash Wednesday”.
For my new friends who might not be familiar with liturgical practice (I was not familiar for a very long time), Lent is the day that begins with Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. The exact date varies, as does the exact day of Easter Sunday, but the ritual and theology have never changed:
“During Lent, let us find concrete ways to overcome our indifference.”
In full disclosure, I am not Catholic, though the above quote is Pope Francis. I’m Protestant, born and bred, and all the best hours of my life spent studying Scripture - and those hours are many - haven’t done a single thing to alter that fact. Theologically, I beg to differ with some of the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church. (And I am sure that they beg to differ with me…)
However, liturgy has been their means to preserve the precious truths about God, down through the ages since (Catholics say) St. Peter. I respect that.
A bit of liturgy, fundamentally, helps us remember. And, most importantly, liturgy helps us to remember the same thing. After all, our faith must not rest on “he said/she said”. There are fundamentals pertinent to following Jesus Christ that have never changed and will never change.
And while I do not officially participate in Ash Wednesday, here is what I love about it:
It involves the outward sign of an inward, invisible truth: we were made from the dust, and to the dust we will return.
Practicing Catholics attend a service where the sign of the cross is made with ashes on their forehead. Since I’m not Catholic, I painted the cross on the back of my hand, using a mixture of ashes and iridescent black paint.
What a sobering reality. This cross is a visible reminder of what for some might be a dark truth: death is the ultimate statistic. This cross on the forehead, for Catholics, is also a visible reminder of the sin of the individual, and the sin of all collective humanity. Consider the following verse from the book of Ezekiel:
So why do I, who am not Catholic in any sense, why do I think at all about Lent?
First of all, again I will tell you that I find a bit of liturgy (another term for liturgy might be “heartfelt ritual”) to be helpful to me as a human. At the risk of seeming reductionist and offensive to my Catholic friends, I find the observance of some liturgies to be simply charming. It makes for an artful life.
I enjoy the sense of continuity that comes with having the same thoughts, reviewing the same truths, and engaging the same practice, year after year after year. It’s why I celebrate a form of Advent at Christmas. Both Lent and Advent are a means of slowing time down just enough to live what I call “a well-considered middle”.
The older I get, the faster time flies. I am looking for ways to mark the time, to consider the cross, and to rejoice in such an overwhelmingly scandalous salvation.
Historically, the objective of these 40 days leading to Easter, is to spend the time in a degree of introspection and total (or near total) abstinence from some besetting weakness or sin. Personally, I believe the Gospel teaches us something different. Jesus Christ has forgiven all my sin, past - present - and future! (That alone bends my brain…it blows my mind. Totally.)
And while my Gospel does teach repentance from sin and dead works, there is a far greater emphasis on the finished work of Christ.
I make the sign of the cross on the back of my hand to celebrate trading my ashes for beauty.
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners, a
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes...”
Here’s a short time lapse of the art that came from today’s celebration of scandalous forgiveness - a 9x12” collage on paper: