How to Reclaim lost parts of yourself
Fifty seemed old to me when I was there. Fifty was the first birthday that made me feel old - over the hill - and that was miserable. Then a friend reminded me of the year of Jubilee described in the Bible. Fifty didn't have to be such a bad time after all, I realized. I began looking at the Bible's description of Jubilee as I would look at a dream or a work of art, expressed in symbolic language.
Reclaiming lost parts of myself
When I looked at "the land" as a way of picturing a person's whole self, as it might be in a dream, I saw the fiftieth year as a time for recovering parts of myself that I had in effect allowed to be taken away from me or to be enslaved, either by other people's unreasonable demands and expectations or by my own. Fifty, I realized, was a time for reclaiming skills, talents, and interests that I had abandoned years earlier in order to follow the pattern that I had mistakenly thought God wanted all women to follow forever.
You shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. You shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. You shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family . ... You shall not sow, or reap the after growth, or harvest the unpruned vines . ... You shall eat only what the field itself produces . ... You shall not cheat one another, but you shall fear your God. -Leviticus 25:9-17
I saw fifty as a time to stop worrying about some of the "fields" that I'd been feeling responsible for. It was time to stop worrying about "unpruned vineyards" - things I maybe should have done but had not done.
I realized that I had sown a lot of good seeds, tended a lot of vines, and reaped good harvests. I saw that I needed to appreciate those accomplishments but not to continue all of them forever. I also saw that some of them had never been required.
Through the Jubilee scripture I felt God was saying to me, "Don't cheat or mistreat any parts of yourself. I love and accept them all. Dedicate this time of your life to letting the best and truest parts of yourself bear fruit."
Discoveries, new directions, and shocks
Fifty became an eye-opening time for me. I set out in some previously unthinkable new directions that turned out to be life changing, in response to what I later recognized as God's call.
In the years around fifty I was discovering new and valuable things about myself and other people. I discovered the influence of personality types, and the importance of dreams as a medium through which God speaks. I realized for the first time that women are continually and unjustly relegated to second-class status by language and other customs, even in the church. At fifty I started attending seminary and the Academy for Spiritual Formation.
I started writing, too--as a way of reflecting and praying at first, but then daring to hope that others might want to read some of what I wanted to write. Eventually I started writing connections.
Where's our place in the church?
For Christians to whom the church is important, getting older can be a difficult time. Even if we feel we still have something to give, finding ways of giving it can be hard.
In a study of six Protestant denominations (Effective Christian Education, by Peter L. Benson and Carolyn H. Elkin; Search Institute, 1990), men and women age seventy and older were found to have greater maturity in faith than any other segment of the congregations studied. However, churches were making little use of this group to help other members mature in faith.
I wonder why. I suspect it's for several reasons. Some older members, of course, no longer want active roles in the church. Some (like some younger ones) oppose all changes that don't fit their personal preferences or what they're used to, so leaders understandably don't want them in significant decision-making roles.
Another reason may be that some older members travel a lot. They visit children and grandchildren, and they make sightseeing trips they couldn't make earlier in life. As a result, they aren't consistently available for the many church jobs that must be done on a regular schedule.
Also, cultural changes have lessened many older people's ability to communicate effectively with younger ones. Older people's tools are likely to be lectures and printed materials instead of the videos, computers, contemporary music, and multi-media that are more likely to reach younger people. Besides, older members didn't have to cope with so much drug use, sexual promiscuity, and violence in their youth or child-raising years, so their experience may not seem useful to younger churchgoers.
Another reason may be one encountered by lay Christians of all ages whose gifts happen to be in areas such as theology, spiritual guidance, or evaluating and planning. Because many clergy apparently consider this their exclusive turf, these lay members -whatever their age--don't get to make the contributions that God calls them to make and gives them the gifts for making.
Time to reevaluate again
Can older Christians find significant ways to use their experience, talents, skills, and spiritual gifts in their churches? What changes would that require? As my birthday approaches I'm reevaluating this. Even as a crone I'd like to keep sounding the trumpet of celebration. I'd like to keep putting the land that is myself to fruitful use. I hope that reading my thoughts will help you do that for yourself, and thus help some churches benefit from gifts they're missing.
We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery ... But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ ... Ephesians 4:14-15
0 God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, 0 God, do not forsake me ... -Psalm 71:17-18
How about you? Even if you have not yet reached your 50th birthday, do you have parts of yourself that need to leave behind? What are the best and truest parts of yourself that need to bear more fruit? Leave a comment below.
