Her.meneutics: A Christian Woman's Midlife Crisis

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« Why I Let My Son Wear Pink | Main | How Do I Explain Easter to My Children? »

April 19, 2011

A Christian Woman's Midlife Crisis

With the guidance of older, wiser mentors, women can face the existential angst of midlife hoping for a new identity in Christ, one stripped of status and comfort.

Michelle Van Loon

When we flipped our new calendars to January 1, 2011, the first wave of baby boomers began turning 65. According to the Pew Research Center, every single day for the next nineteen years, ten thousand more will join them.

As psychologist Vivian Diller recently noted, midlife is being redefined by the boomers who are now marking their passage through this life stage. Twentieth century notions of aging and retirement are being challenged by a combination of generational preference and financial necessity. The fastest growing demographic enrolling in seminaries are people over 50.

Even with the boomer propensity toward reinvention, there is no way to re-brand (or circumvent) the spiritual crisis that happens at midlife as we move from the ambitions that forge the first half of our lives to our search for meaning in the second half. As author Dale Hanson Bourke noted at Her.meneutics last summer, “Few decisions made in our second stage of life represent a natural progression toward what has been built in the first half of life. It’s as if we have to completely turn our backs on our first-half identities in order to invest fully in our second callings.”

This is not an abstract question for me as a woman born at the tail end of the boom. My age-peers are asking a lot of hard questions these days, best captured in a conversation I had with a friend not long ago. Kim invited me to follow her into her youngest son’s now-vacant bedroom as she searched an item I’d loaned her in a forgotten corner of the closet. As we stood in the empty space, she said wistfully, “I was prepared for the nest to empty. I am busy with work and church responsibilities. But I’m stuck. I feel I’ve stalled out spiritually. To tell you the truth, I think I was there long before Tyler started packing. I feel as empty as this room, and it scares the heck out of me.”

Kim and I shared the same unsettling existential questions at that point in our lives: What’s next for me? God, where are you in this confusion?

Each one of us could have used a mentor — an older, wiser woman to journey through midlife with us. Those who have had wise moms or generous older friends willing to share their experience have been handed the gift of a compass to help them navigate the upheaval of midlife.

However, I learned (via an admittedly informal poll of the midlife women I know) that many of us involved in intentional mentoring relationships with younger women have never had a mentor in our own lives. If there were ever a time we needed spiritual direction, it’s during midlife.

Though it is certainly not the same as having a mentor, a canon of literature can help us begin to make sense of our experience at this crossroads, but it may not be found where we’d first think of looking, which might be in the self-help or women’s section of a bookstore or online vendor.

Rather, it's found in the experiences of contemplatives through Christian history. Sister Rosemarie Carfagna notes, in Contemplation and Midlife Crisis, the profound connection between midlife crisis and the contemplative life:

People who try to describe what happens to them during a crisis frequently mention experiential signs that contemplatives also report . . . in crisis, their sense of identity seems to change. They become aware of apparently irreconcilable opposites. They realize vividly their own weaknesses and shortcomings. Emotions arise that can be very disturbing. There might be feelings of anxiety, even terror at what they find themselves facing.

Carfagna notes the powerful linkage between the spiritual crises experiences of contemplatives, which often come into flower during this life stage, and the specific developmental tasks and changes that happen to all of us at midlife. She says the contemplatives' example of spiritual struggle traces for all of us the jagged contours of transition and the promise — if we are patient and cooperative with God’s work in the process — of a more mature and engaged spirituality. She affirms Hanson Bourke’s observation about what can happen on the far side of the crisis, suggesting that we will no longer ". . . recognize ourselves by the benchmarks that previously defined us: status, security, predictability, possessions, comforts of all sorts. They are gone, but to our amazement they are hardly missed. The new life that is given us surpasses them all."

God's purposes for the disorientation of midlife can bear fruit out of the intimacy of the contemplative's experience. But perhaps the most lasting fruit will come if boomer women become a generation of generous, ruthlessly honest Titus 2 women who search for every opportunity to pass along own compasses to younger friends who are entering midlife. We are responsible to help them understand what happens when an empty room tells the story of their own echoing souls.

Comments

This blog is an answer to prayer of sorts. I am the first of the Gen Xers. When I was younger, and my children were younger, it felt like there was an overload of information/guidance and programs for me as a Christian woman. With my oldest child embarking on the downward slope of high school, I sense the coming emptiness and the challenge. I look forward to reading this book; I think the challenge to mentor is wonderful. Thank you.

I found this article very interesting.

My friends and I have watched our mother's go through this sort of crisis when we all left home. I don't feel like they had support or really knew what to do or where to turn (if there was a place to turn)

I also felt like my reaction was a desperate attempt to ensure I didn't end up there too someday. I see so many of us now trying to keep some other focus, some other calling, besides the temporary calling of raising our children. I think a lot of it is in hopes to prevent this 'crisis' moment later in life. The irony of it all is we've all hit our own crisis moments early instead.

You mention that the answer would be older, wiser women who would mentor younger women. From my own experience, as well as reading a lot on aging, I think this generation will experience aging very differently from generations who have gone before us. We are going to live a lot longer and have more health and energy than generations before the Boomers. Rather than seeking mentors, who may not really understand this newer dynamic, I suggest midlife women work with a life coach that will help them create a new vision for their lives. When children leave home, a women may feel empty, and there is a time to mourn that loss. But at this time in life a woman may have more time, more money, more life experience, more wisdom, and on and on. This is a time to dust off old dreams, and create new vision. A midlife woman has so much to offer the world! Time to fly!

I am 63, and remember being hit by what I discovered was called 'Perimenopause', without any preparation, weeping over everything, thinking I was going crazy, my marriage was falling apart. Then I discovered one secular book that addressed this.
Now, in the past 20 years, I've met so many women going through the same struggles, and eventually resolving them in similar directions.
The initial physical signs of aging are soon forgotten; our brains don't retain the memories of what used to be. But, the most difficult part was being unprepared for losing my children.
After nurturing them and keeping them alive for 18 years, suddenly my part was mostly over and done. We had done well, and they were out in the world, successful, independent...and I was...unneeded.
No books had been written about this that I found, and no women close to me or publically spoke about their pain.
It's been over ten years now, and my kids have become my friends, but that transition has been difficult.
I hate that I was so needy, even as a productive, normal appearing woman. The loss of meaning/identity as a necessary mother was shattering to me.
We do need to speak out and be aware of others who suffer.

When I read that I am supposed to now be finding younger women to mentor, I feel something close to panic. "Mentoring" to me feels like just another kind of caregiving, and the very last thing I need right now is another caregiving responsibility. After raising four children, maintaining a relationship with a husband (and let's face it, even the best husbands require a significant amount of caregiving), finding myself smack dab in the middle of elder care issues, not to mention many years of carrying a major load of leadership work in a small church, all the while working full time, what I mostly feel is "done."

One of the problems we have in our culture is that the older you get, the more invisible you become. We don't value the experience of the older members of our society and families. Even church culture revolves mostly around families with children. Those on either end of that process--the unmarried young adults and the old, may be largely overlooked.

As a church, we are trying, but our culture at large values youth much more than the wisdom that usually goes with those gray hairs!

Yes, I wrote a book on the subject but I am still searching each day for direction, discernment, and definition. There are no easy answers. Some days I can rest in the understanding that God wants to keep me off balance and open to what might come my way. Other days I am impatient and whiny.
What I mostly say to younger women is, "It will be okay." I'm not sure that's mentoring exactly, but that's what I needed in the midst of work and child-rearing and all the rest. Now I look for older women who exhibit grace and wisdom, joy and humor.
I'm just back from a trip to Zambia and am struck by how many older women in Africa seem to age well, despite so much hardship. Maybe part of the difference is that their society honors them. Perhaps we can do more to value the older women in our midst.

"...older women in Africa seem to age well, despite so much hardship. Maybe part of the difference is that their society honors them." Or maybe they just don't have the time for a midlife crisis, as survival takes precedence. I am 58 years, 7 mos., and 10 days old and have had a half dozen or so midlife crises in my time. Funny thing, but I always recovered about the time the mortage came due. And to my knowledge my father never had a mid life crisis. He was a teenager during the depression years and grew up on a small farm in eastern Wyoming. Those people didn't have time for naval gazing. Purpose and meaning came from being able to put food on the table for the family. And disorientation was a product of an empty stomach. If you can't tell, I'm not too sympathetic toward this author's article.

To Anonymous who is not sympathetic: you are truly blessed.

I am a 54 year old, never married female. Children and empty nests are not the issue for me. I was forced to retire early due to a sudden unexpected disability. I was told I can no longer work but I am still looking for something part-time to bring in a few more dollars a month. I erroneously had tied my identity with my occupation. With the occupation gone and chronic pain that only eases at times, I am searching to re-connect with God and find new purpose. This is my midlife challenge. I don't like the word "crisis". That only raises my stress level more! (smiling)

Good article. It's true, there is a dearth of good sincere mentoring for women, especially if your parents are deceased.

So blessed by this article, thank you. I also have been so touched by many that have commented here. To Mary, Dee, Pam, Joy and Suzy...thank you for sharing your hearts. To Nina...I wish I could give you a big hug...He sees you and loves you.
Thanks again ladies for sharing.

Ditto, S. Schulz. The comments have touched me as well.

Mid-life crisis? Nonsense. A luxury of western civilization brought on by unrealistic expectations. But did Peter, Paul, James, John, etc. ever have a mid life crisis? They did! It was called martyrdom.

I am new to "Emerging Christianity" and have not previously been a dedicated Christian as I have gone back and forth between Christianity and other forms and practices of spirituality but now, at 55, find myself wanting to reconcile my Christian background and am very interested in this developing Christian theology. Anyway, I was struck by this blog as I have also been feeling like I am facing the Void. I, like Nina Williams, am single, never married, at 55, no children, was dedicated to my career as an attorney and active in 12-step programs until I had to retire on disability due to a medical condition. Am trying to face the terror of this seeming Void and re-develop my connection to God while trying to heal some old inner conflicts about spirituality vs. (or "and") sexuality, the meaning of my life when I am no longer able to be as active in the world as I was and am not involved with husband or children....And other old stuff that midlife seems to make me re-visit about my own worth and value as a woman to God and the world. I believe that midlife is an opportunity to heal our relationship with ourselves, our lives, God, and the our community. Given certain things in my previous life, I especially need to know that I have some value and I believe that God can show me that I have value despite my aging body and mind, and lack of husband and children. But it's an ongoing process. Some people do this more actively and some people do it through more contemplative means. Neither way is right or wrong. Some people are more active extroverts and some are more contemplative introverts (and, of course, most are some combination of both). God values both ways. I do not consider my contemplation and inner turmoil to be useless "naval gazing" but a sincere attempt to be vulnerable and open to God and life. Since I am probably not going to be "martyred" (except perhaps by my own unrealistic expectations of myself - smile), I will have to settle for being a run-of-the-mill fallible human being who honestly seeks a connection to God and Christ. I don't think Paul and the Apostles spent much time thinking about women at all, as far as I can tell. So we're kind of operating on a blank slate here, as far as the Bible is concerned.

Susan, you wrote: "I believe that midlife is an opportunity to heal our relationship with ourselves, our lives, God, and the our community." Amen to that.

Scripture speaks to our turmoil in the words of Ecclesiastes or in the interactions of Jesus with some of the hurting women he encountered. The mentions of women in the epistles tend toward the directive, but I also see examples of women (probably older women!) in positions of leadership/influence (Lydia - Acts 16, Priscilla - Acts 18, and Junia - Romans 16:7) and exemplifying faith (Hebrews 11:35).

God is there, waiting, in the Void for each of us who find ourselves there. Blessings.

@SQ: Here are some bible verses God has used in my life. I hope they encourage you on your search to know Him.
Jeremiah 29:11 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope."
Jeremiah 31:3 "The LORD appeared to him from afar, saying,
"I have loved you with an everlasting love;Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness."
Jeremiah 33:3 "Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.'"
Joshua 1:8 "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success."
Isaiah 41:10 Isaiah 41:10 "'Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'"
Romans 8:31What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?"

Regarding martyrdom? We are to die daily Colossians 3:3For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

65 is midlife?

I thoguht it was more like 40 - 60.

Jennifer, mid-life is more of a description than a time-frame. I think it is whenever the empty nest hits us, and with many women having children later, empty nest could be 50-60 or later. That is when we have to completely redefine our lives - especially those of us who have grown children and no husband. The empty nest is very, very empty. I like the idea of having a life coach, but they are very expensive!

Personally I think the unsympathic anonymous writer and Dan need to get more compassion. Wonderful if you don't ever experience a mid-life crises,but for those of us who are merely humans, it is a real thing and not a question of selfish navel gazing. For women going through menopause, some of the issues may be physical effects of hormonal imbalance. I'm 51 and I can tell you I'm having a very hard time with it. I cry nearly every day and moodswings, oh boy! Still I perserve and I pray and asks God's help...but it doesn't help me or others suffering to see insensitive comments (particularly from a man) about what we're going through! Thank you, blogger, for addressing a topic that should be addressed from a Christian perspective, and doing it in a realistic way.

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