A few years back I was talking with a pastor from the conservative church I originate from and he made a comment about how a lot of women when they hit their forties, they go a little crazy. I can’t remember his exact words but that was the gist.
I found it quite insulting but not unexpected from a patriarchal church leader. The question that I had was, “Why?” Why women and not men – according to him? What is going on? I have some ideas based on my own experience. I believe that a lot of women who are suppressed and controlled will accept their lot in life for awhile until either they are crushed or they no longer are willing. In a church where women are not allowed to vote for their church leaders but expected to bring the baking are told but by these actions that they are lesser. Throw in a Bible text such as, “Women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak but should be in submission” and you have Bible texts to back up the inferiority of women. At some point the brave ones will rise up. These are the women that “go a little crazy.”
But I don’t believe it’s just women that “go a little crazy” when midlife sneaks up on them. I think that when the realization hits that you’ve lived half your life you wonder if this is truly the life you want to live.
Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, talks about the two halves of life. The first half of life is about ego building where success, security, and looking good are almost the only questions. We gaze into Narcissus’s mirror, begging for the attention of others. However, if we have been mirrored well in our early years, we learn to put down our own mirror. Once we have our narcissistic fix, we have no need to protect our identity or defend it. It just is, and is more than enough. Instead of focusing the mirror on ourselves, we can focus it on others. And here enters the second half of life.
The only problem with entering the second half of life is that we generally need a giant push off the cliff. On our own we don’t want to leave the comfortable and the certainty. Like a momma bird shoves her little one out of the nest to test her wings, we are pushed out of our comfort zone and fall. The fall is terrifying as we confront our life as it is. We enter our “necessary suffering” as Rohr calls it.
Brene Brown talks about midlife but she doesn’t talk about it as a crisis or even as a bad thing. She talks about an unravelling. She says, “People may call what happens at midlife ‘a crisis,’ but it’s not. It’s an unraveling – a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live. Not the one you’re ‘supposed’ to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.”
When I left high school, I had doubts about some of the doctrines my church taught but I didn’t have the courage to challenge them. But more than that, I had an inner pull to a less conservative type of church where people were willing to be open and authentic instead of putting on the armour every Sunday of perfectly crafted hair, war paint, and heals. Instead of making a change, I cowardly further indoctrinated myself by going to seminary for three years squashing all rebellion – or at least shoving it down as deeply as I could. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents and be the only child to leave The Church. I would be labeled the black sheep for sure, and to be honest, I didn’t mind that my brother held that award. I have since taken the award away from him. Or more precisely, it’s been taken away from him and handed to me.
Black sheep are important in a weak family because they tightly band the others together. The black sheep becomes the focal point and the target for shooting practices. They are the reminder to the others of what will happen if they decide to choose differently than the path that has been laid out for them. But usually black sheep are going through an unravelling. Some will learn to live life on their terms and living life on your terms is how Tony Robbins describes a leader so I am ok with being the black sheep.
The past number of years have been my midlife unravelling. The fall was terrifying as I let go of my safety net of family and church. Each one I did not want to let go of and yet I could no longer hold on to. I could not hold on to a family who could not bravely say to me, “We don’t like your choices but we are family and so we will choose to love you and support you.” Rather, they chose to support my ex-husband. I could not hold on to a church that believed in shaming people to behave instead of sitting in the hard places with hurting people as Jesus modelled.
The fall has been the scariest thing I have gone through but it is a falling upward as Rohr calls it. A falling to find a God of relationships and not rules. A falling to an authentic life and peeling off the mask. A falling into hard conversations instead of safe topics and big smiles. A falling into who I was meant to be. I’m still discovering who that is but right now I am content with knowing who I am not.
As I enter this second half of my life, I have decided to make it count. Perhaps it’s the realization that each day is precious and a gift and I no longer want to waste it. I will read more instead of playing useless games on my phone. I will learn Spanish because my Constant and I have plans to move to Costa Rica when the kids are much older. I will exercise because I am happiest when I am physically strong. I will fill my mind with positive words from people such as Joyce Meyer so that positive words will come out of my mouth. And I will choose to be a blessing to others.
And maybe that is enough. Maybe I don’t need to be a CEO or start my own business. Maybe that would have been important in the first half of my life. Maybe it is enough to seek after authenticity, to live life in the present, and to love deeply.
Darlene
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no longer small 