I sat across the living room from Jean in the women’s Bible study. I knew in that moment I wanted to do what Jean was doing … someday. I also knew there had to be a lot of years’ experience of living and spiritual growing and maturing between that day and the day I’d be ready to be doing what Jean was doing, leading women in Bible study.
I’d read the verses that instructed a pastor to, “teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4 Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God” (Titus 2:3—5 NIV).
I knew that someday I wanted to be able to do that, teach younger women to truly live life, becoming what God calls us to be. At the time, I was a young wife and mother myself, not an older woman yet, so I knew I had a lot of living to do before that day came!
Well, I lived every day to the fullest, I believe, for the next few decades. Strange when you can count your life in whole decades, isn’t it? I thanked God for every day, knowing each one was a gift from God, through all the ups and downs, good days and very hard days, sorrows and joys. The joys overshadowing the sorrows, mostly realized at the end of dark valleys. Learning to live this life God calls us to amid the life we find ourselves in.
The decades marched by one day at a time. I blinked, and I was that “older woman.”
I am confident that, as an older woman who has been learning as a disciple of Jesus for many decades, I need to be about the work God called me to back when I was a young woman, when I had only two and a half decades under my belt. And so, I am pursuing that work, teaching other women.
There was a surprise season of writing. First came my book so many people encouraged me to write. Following the publication of Brokenness to Beauty: Transforming Your Brokenness into a Beautiful Life in January 2016, I was again encouraged by several women to write a Bible study to accompany the book. So, I did. Brokenness to Beauty Bible Study: Going Deeper to the Source of Transforming Your Brokenness to Beauty was published late in 2018 and I launched it in January of 2019 (click on the link on each book to learn more about the book).
For several months I have felt “written out.” My season of writing, at least for now, seems to be over. And that’s okay. I want to be doing what God wants me to be doing in this new season. And so, I am.
I’m now facilitating my second class of Brokenness to Beauty Bible Study and I love to open the Word with women. I also started and am facilitating a Women’s Discipleship group. What could be more exciting than getting into the Word of God with others and learning together from our Teacher, God’s Spirit, and striving to obey him?
What has God called you to in this season? Maybe you’re in the early decades of your life. Be faithful in each day to obediently follow hard after Jesus. Maybe you are in the mid- or later decades of your life. Be faithful to obediently follow hard after Jesus! Following means learning and obeying. Follow his call to the area where he wants to use your skills and knowledge gained in the years you’ve been learning and becoming what he wants us to be.
Want guaranteed success in all you do? There’s only one way I know of to be assured of it:
“Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:8 NIV).
Live life!