What a blessing our Creator has built into His creation when He decided to fill this life with cycles! They are everywhere from our solar system to the electrons that spin around atoms. I love when a new year cycles around again, and the opportunities it seems to bring to recommit myself to goals I’ve too often forgotten. I love the cycle of a week because it begins with a day of worship and helps me remember to balance time between work with play. Even the cycle of a day is so beautiful. Sunrise to sunset is a small picture of one’s life, ending in peaceful rest. Each day presents the prospect of grasping pieces of time flying like a whirlwind past us, to make something beautiful happen- to make a difference. Perhaps the most magnificent of all cycles is the seasonal cycle, a cycle that too symbolizes our very lives.
If spring is the time life begins and seed is best sown, and summer is the time when the fruit of our lives is rapidly being produced, then fall, the period of time I am presently enjoying, is a time for joyfully preparing for a bountiful harvest. For many, autumn is a favorite season, and I believe that the time in life it symbolizes can be just as sweet; it is the time when we hope to finally harvest more fully all we have invested during the first three decades of life. “Give her the product of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates” (Proverbs 31:31) is the deepest desire I share with other “autumn women”.
Why should you look forward to your forties and fifties? By the fourth and fifth decades in life, you will have had time to sharpen the skills that delight you most in His service. Indeed, you will know what your talents are, and will be more confident when using those talents. Among the skills expected of a fruit bearing woman is to “teach what is good” to younger women. Whether in a public setting or one-on-one, the wise, older woman is often approached for advice, and perhaps this is why basing all advice upon Biblical principles, as well as honoring the privacy and reputations of others is among the instructions given to older women in Titus 2. A woman in the autumn of her life has a sense of satisfaction knowing the difference this advice has made in the lives around her. Often, because she has walked side by side experiencing and surviving both her own trials and those near to her, she has had the opportunity to form warm attachments to her sisters in Christ that neither time nor distance can sever. By experiencing these trials, she has also learned to appreciate that any day, even a dull day, is a glorious day, if it is free of “drama”. Sometimes we must experience some bad days to know a good day when we see it. Experiencing trials also teaches us to know the difference between a mountain and molehill. A woman in her forties and fifties has this advantage.
Why else should you smile at your future? Frankly, not only are you likely to be done giving birth, but all the warm affection you’ve expressed toward your children, combined with “winning all the battles” with them when they were toddlers and young children, can yield marvelously fun, almost independent adults called teenagers, who still know you’re the boss, but are among your best friends as well. “Give her the product of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates” (Proverbs 31:31)
There are yet more blessings of autumn. I believe Mark Twain was right when he said, “No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” My husband Mark and I will be celebrating our twenty-eighth anniversary this December, and are planning our “empty nest” years the way we use to plan our “when we get married” years. I thought I was happy when I married him at seventeen, but little did I know our marriage at the time was like a little garden in a newly built neighborhood where all the trees are seedlings, the shrubs are dwarfed, and the perennials have not yet had time to spread. Almost three decades later, our love has gradually blossomed into a lovely, fragrant, flourishing garden in a way that only time and God can accomplish.
What can you do to reap autumn blessings? Spend time with God every day in prayer and Bible study (James 4:8, 2 Tim. 2:15). Discover your talents and use them often (Rom. 12:6-8). Endure trials with courage, faith, and optimism (James 1:2). Bond with your sisters in Christ (1 Pet. 1:22). Instill security in your children and reap respect by being habitually warm and affectionate toward them- yet “winning every battle” (Titus 2:4, Col. 3:20). Choose a husband who will best help you bear spiritual fruit (Psalm 128:1-4). Feed your marriage every day (Prov. 5).
Where do I hope to go from this point? I’m hoping my sisters in Christ are right when they say, “You think the forties are great?! Wait until you experience the blessings of the decades that follow!”
Cindy Dunagan
Author of the Journaling Toward Moral Excellence series of journals.
cindy@straightpathspress.com
Journaling Toward Moral Excellence
