Midlife threshold: Recomm​i​t

For almost thirty years, I have followed Jesus. It has been an imperfect following. There have been days of great joy and utter despair, sometimes mingled together. When He captured my heart, all those years ago, I was young and vulnerable and desperate for love and attention. Over the course of these decades, I have been remade with the love of God, the power of the scriptures, and the impact of His people. I am not the same woman who first bowed her heart and asked Him to make me His own. 

This relationship has gone through some important changes over time. From the first flush of love and wonder, through dark days and difficult seasons, I have found Him to be present and kind. He never promised to make my life easy, but He has brought fullness and love to the great hollows of life. His goodness has impacted every aspect of my heart, mind, and spirit. Like a long marriage, this relationship has become a constant, a firm structure in my life. 

In the quiet spaces of my soul, l learned that I could be loved unconditionally, and received with great joy. I have been shaped and reshaped by His love again and again. Within the confidence of this relationship, I have faced my greatest fears and found pathways to reach my dreams. 

When I first came to know him, following Jesus became intimately intertwined with the patterns of Christian life and service. My faith grew upon the structure of church life. The spiritual sustenance of the scriptures, the challenges and possibilities of community, as well as the practices of simply showing up week after week became the strong trellis upon which my life rested. 

And yet, there came a time when my soul grew cold. I could no longer hear the One who my soul loves in the voices of the congregation. Pain and loss opened the door to regret. I felt lost in the conflict between what I expected in my life and what I experienced.

New voices and fresh compromises left me alienated and isolated from the familiar world I had inhabited for so long. Suddenly a mess of politics, and cultural wars overtook my familiar world. I could not imagine a way forward within the faith tradition that had raised me.  

This religious machine almost extinguished the love and tenderness that had built my life from the inside. I wondered if I still wanted to be counted among them. 

In that dark time, I realized that my faith had been built on a wide and deep foundation of need. My need. I had come into this relationship empty and broken by grief and loss. The need had seemed unending. And yet, here I was over twenty years later realizing that my need was no longer enough. 

I began to wonder what it would look like to begin again here. To choose Him again, not based on my need, but based on love. His love had given me shelter and allowed my life to flourish. His love had built resiliency, hope, and purpose. I wondered if here in this new space, I might simply commit to loving Him again. 

So, in the quiet spaces of my soul, I recommitted not to the Christian life, but to Jesus.  

I was shocked when this simple recommitment seemed to accelerate an unravelling. The life I had carefully crafted around the roles and responsibilities of being a Christian seemed to implode. My relationship to the church and to the traditions of my faith crumbled in my hands. 

I floundered in this new space but found that He was there. In the aftermath, I took some time to rest and regain my footing. My center of gravity shifted from under the steeple back into the center of my own life. I am more firmly grounded and intimately wound up in Jesus than ever before. 

I don’t know if there will again be a formal role for me in the church, or if I want one. My relationship with the church won’t ever be the same. I don’t think it should. For now, it is enough that there is a space in the pew, and some people nearby to love.

Join me for an exploration of Midlife Thresholds.

Dictionary: Threshold 1) a strip of wood, metal, or stone forming the bottom of a doorway and crossed in entering a house or room, 2) a point of entry or beginning.

Over the past few years, I stumbled, tiptoed, crawled, or tripped across a bunch of these. Suddenly due to age, experience, or trauma, we find that the world has shifted in unfamiliar ways. It seems that there is no going back, instead, we must each find our way into this new season of life. Join me as I explore these Midlife Thresholds and embrace the new beginning that each of them offers.