Unfortunately, I am not sure any solid Christian will find, read, and support this post. They are all at church this morning while I am attending my church of one on the couch. They all watched their kids leave home, attend college, get great jobs, marry the right guy, have kids, and are all back at the same church loving and worshipping God together. I am questioning every doctrine I believe in, had all my kids move away, only one of four want anything to do with God, am healing from past spiritual abuse, have a yearning to go back to church, but am disillusioned by a church that seems out of touch with the basic tenet of how we can just get saved, stay saved, and serve others until life is over.
When you aren’t the June Cleaver of church…
you may become disillusioned with church when the kids leave home. You may not find those cute church programs and activities applicable any longer. As you look at the last half of your life you may decide that spending hours at the church fellowship hall isn’t applicable to helping the drug addict get saved. To helping the homeless find housing, helping that guy stop jacking off to online pornography for the millionth time, and impacting those within your family that want nothing to do with God, still.
When you are hurt by the church at midlife…
it could start a revolution of change within your soul. Leaving one church isn’t that big of a deal, but leave because you were spiritually abused for ten years and in the midst of major life change, and you may become disillusioned to the point of walking away from God. Yet something deep inside says don’t lose Him altogether. We are looking at the second half of life. Something about our impending death makes us think more seriously about what comes after.
Twitter is the only serious place go to question church…
because church thinks its Jesus and we can’t question Jesus. Church is afraid and can’t entertain the idea that it might not be everything it tells itself it is. Disillusioned people don’t have a safe place to question church and find answers so they take to the normal outlets of the day—social media. We can do what good Christians do and bury our questions and be good legalists. We can just keep showing up, participating, smiling, and being told we are doing a good work, all the while our soul is agonizing with pain.
Even if people are wrong to question church, the truth is they are hurt by it, need a place to heal from it, question their faith, and seek to maintain a relationship with God despite what people do to skew their view of him.
ME
It’s not a proper midlife crisis…
unless you start drinking again, lose all purpose in your life, take more days off than you work, think about leaving your spouse, feel like quitting, pull away from your family, dive into self-care, dye your hair, hit the gym, buy new clothes, and generally lose yourself. We didn’t drink the entire time we raised the kids, but started social drinking when they did.
I remember telling my husband to turn left, he turned right, and we laughed hysterically as he drove around an ice cream joint completely clueless as to why. At the same time our youngest daughter calls worried after I texted her saying we just drank too much at a place about 30 minutes away from home. She called to Facetime and was introducing us to her friends as we were laughing and telling them we might have to use GPS to get home. They said we were cool which told me we had gotten out of control. After the call I went back to texting our oldest daughter about God’s will in her life which I got by with because I didn’t tell her what we were doing. So yeah, she didn’t know I was drunk, her sister just called to be sure we didn’t get in a drunk driving accident, while I was texting her godly advice.
How Not To Lose Your Faith
I was more than aware I was in a crisis. What happened to the mom who took her four kids to church every Sunday? What happened to the woman who led a community women’s ministry for seven years and whose main concern in life was loving the hopeless. How had I become a woman who hadn’t attended church in two years, was getting drunk, and enjoying every minute of it. Yet I felt certain the questioning journey I was on was part of God’s plan. You scoff at me? I would too, but everything that had been a foundation in my life was gone, I was lost, and was certain God was going to use all this to redefine me.
If you don’t like it please go read someone else.
ME
I never questioned God’s existence, power, and our relationship….
there are some things that don’t change and God is one of them. While His people may have disillusioned me and while my life was causing me to question everything I never felt He had changed and I was certain that I somehow wanted to end up in a new and closer relationship with Him. I didn’t desire to walk away from Him and I knew eventually we could reconnect in more powerful ways.
I knew the goal was to reconfigure my life and get back to church.
My husband and I’s midlife rebellion is mirroring our adults’ kids twenty something rebellion. I knew it wouldn’t last. We weren’t headed towards a life of drunkenness and debauchery. I knew we were figuring things out. Possibly not in the best way, but it’s where we were at. I had this understanding that I would pivot and create a new life and that new life would eventually include church. I am sure once grandchildren come we will settle down and I will want to take little Sally to church with me, right?
I prayed, read Christian books, and eventually cracked open that Bible….
Call it hypocrisy if it makes you feel better, but I had to find a way to keep things going. It kept me connected to a world I was no longer a part of and to Him. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I knew eventually I would get back to being a right Christian and to being more like the other women my age who were still loving church and everything in it. I would eventually go back to just a drink or two, get back into a cute church down the road, and focus my life on giving. I hope. Reading keeps me connected to a world I want to get back to, someday, somehow.
A proper midlife crisis is quite something. We had life figured out and then the kids left home. We had a good bead on life and then got older and started thinking about the inevitability of our death. We started looking at the life we created and questioning, at least some of us did. Don’t be surprised when every aspect of your life is questioned that this would include faith and church. We created a life with children and then they leave home and we suddenly question everything we created and in that we start defining what we want our lives to look like now.
Questioning isn’t abandoning. If we found God, faith, or a religion the first time we can find it again. Questioning the way faith is played out isn’t necessarily questioning the existence of God. Church is a package of doctrines and theology and ways to apply that to our lives and midlife is a perfect time to decide what package we want. As we grow and mature our faith grows and matures and some change seems inevitable. What worked when we were young followers, might not work when we are older.
I look at Christian women in my life and am in awe at how they raise children, watch them leave home, and maintain their love and participation in the same church as always. I wish I was like them. I wish I was at church this morning loving the Lord with my fellow parishioners and looking forward to the fellowship dinner after morning service, but I can’t envision going by myself. I can’t envision enjoying all those activities and getting involved in the kids ministry when my kids are scattered around the country and I clearly won’t have the grand kids close by one day to take to vacation Bible school.
So we figure out life and part of that is figuring out our faith, our doctrine, our theology, our religion, and how we want that to play out in our lives. Somehow we can drink too much one night and text one daughter about how drunk we are and text the other about God’s will in her life and still come out as faithful as we were before. It’s a journey. If we can maintain our belief in Who it is really about we will have hope that in the next part of the journey there will be answers, and those answers will lead us to a new journey of faith that will lead us back to a church that fits who we are and where we are in life.
Marcy Pedersen
