Selected Excerpts From
Second Calling: Finding Passion & Purpose for the Rest of Your Life
by Dale Hanson Bourke
These excerpts are provided as sample copy only. Official excerpts and reprints are available
upon request. Please do not quote from this document—consult the finished book.
Women in the Second Half of Life
We are no longer in that part of life when we simply respond to parents, children, husbands, jobs, the PTA, and recycling schedules. We are not spending every single minute trying to keep everyone else happy. We are suddenly not so busy. In fact, we might even be feeling a little lonely. Where did all the noise and activity go? Where are all the people who once needed us? One day, we realize we are facing down the gaping abyss known as the second half of life.
If you are a Christian woman, as I am, and if you read the Bible, as I do, you may at some point begin to realize that if you listen hard enough, you hear something holy whispering to you. It is not a voice of doom but of promise. It is not about condemnation but about deliverance. It does not say that you are all washed up but that you are being baptized into a new life.
God, it turns out, doesn’t really care if we are sagging or graying or aching. He doesn’t care how much estrogen we have or whether our falling arches have moved us from stiletto heels to Birkenstocks. And here’s a hot flash for us all: in God’s economy, the fact that we are becoming less physically attractive may be just the way he wants us. God is mostly concerned with one aspect of us: our hearts. He wants them to be in tip-top shape. He wants them strong, responsive, and enthusiastic, even if he has to wait until we are eighty and looking back fondly on the days of fine lines and wrinkles. But it would be a shame if he had to wait that long!
Leaving the Past Behind
Most of us come to midlife with baggage we don’t even notice. Have you ever spotted yourself in a window or mirror and wondered who that woman is? Even though most of us look at our faces in a mirror several times a day, we still don’t have an accurate picture of who we are. We are probably far more clueless about how others view us and how our mental health affects our reactions. Just as we should have a physical checkup, I highly recommend finding a Christian counselor and having a mental checkup too. What I have learned has truly changed my emotional and spiritual life. It has saved me from repeating mistakes of the past and allowed me to move forward with an understanding of my strengths and weaknesses. It has even helped me help others in a meaningful way.
Come to a place where you can see yourself clearly, and then ask God to help you learn what you can from it. Don’t be discouraged by your faults. The sixteenth-century Christian known simply as Fenelon once said this: “Don’t be surprised at the defects in good people. God leaves weakness in all of us. In those who are advanced, the weakness is out of proportion to the otherwise mature life.” That’s a very freeing way not only to judge others more gently but also to look at ourselves.
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More Than One Way to Pray
My time with God is best when I get up before everyone else, but it doesn’t always work that way. I’ve learned to not be too hard on myself. If I have my time with God during lunch, I don’t waste energy regretting my morning. I know that I already handed the day over to God in those very first moments of the day, and I’m now just improving upon it. I like to read a devotional or two, and I read at least one chapter of the Bible. I try to pause and let God speak to me through these sources, sometimes copying down a meaningful verse or writing in my journal when something really strikes me. I have created a prayer notebook that keeps me organized and also serves as a source of inspiration. On days when I’m discouraged, I can look back to “answered prayer” pages and often be reminded of burdens I carried a year before that have now been lifted. When I tell someone I will pray for him or her, I try to write that down in my prayer journal so I don’t forget. I can’t pray without a list, so my notebook list is also transferred to a note card I carry with me, where I only use initials in case it falls out of my purse.
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I pray in a way I never did in the first half of my life: I picture myself entering a lovely meadow, carrying a basket and wearing a backpack. I come there and meet Jesus. In my basket are flowers that I give to Jesus with words of thanks and praise. There have been days when I only had one flower in my basket, which I gave to Jesus to thank him for meeting me just as he promised he would. Other days, my basket contains a full bouquet of gratitude. I picture Jesus smiling as I hand him the flowers. Then I pull off my backpack and take out the rocks. I give him my burdens that are weighing me down. I give him the tiny, sharp stones that are irritating me. I give him the rocks that seem so hard they will never be cracked. I visualize handing these all over to Jesus, who takes them from me and then helps me put on my empty backpack. I share this very personal imagery because it has changed my prayer life from a dreaded “quiet time” to a very fulfilling interaction with the Lord. It is simply a way in which I use my very visual sense to connect in prayer. This imagery may not work for anyone else, but it makes me anticipate my “walk in the meadow” and my “meeting with the Lord” as an active time rather than a passive event.
Recognizing Idols
A little more than fifteen years ago, I had my first experience in a developing country. After being promised a comfortable hotel and a safe experience, I agreed to go to Guatemala with five other women on what became the first Women of Vision trip. As you can tell from the examples in this book, that trip was not my last to a developing country. It opened my eyes to a totally different way of life and opened my heart to a calling to serve the poor that seems to grow stronger every year.
Years later, when I read Ward Brehm’s book White Man Walking, I identified with him when he described his first trip to Africa: “My first visit to Africa brought me quickly to my knees. I was out of my element, out of my comfort zone, and it felt terrible. . . . For most of us, our sense of reality and security is based entirely upon the things in our lives that are routine, comfortable, and familiar. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with these things, they can distract us from the need to have our reality and security come from God. Africa forces the issue.”
My trip to Guatemala forced the issue for me. I saw many things on that short trip that upended beliefs I had held for my whole life. I met people who had few possessions but seemed happier than most Americans. We visited mothers who loved their children well, despite little education and no assistance from Dr. Spock. I saw poor people who wouldn’t think of stealing from their neighbors. I met women who had only one dress and wore no makeup but glowed with beauty.
When I returned home, I saw my whole world differently. Why did I think I needed a closet overflowing with more clothes than I could possibly wear? What was I thinking, living in a house so big when each of the rooms could have comfortably housed a Guatemalan family? Why did our family need so much when so many people in the world had so little? It was a radical and shocking assault on my world-view. And it showed me, for the first time, how much of my life was cluttered with idols.
You’ve Got to Have Friends
If prayer is the bedrock of the second half of life, then friends are the rich soil that gives form, substance, and richness to our calling. Friends, in my experience, are different in this time of life. The friendships are truer, deeper, and more involved while being, ironically, less complicated. In my second half of life, I am more inclined to value a friend for who she is and not over think the implications of our relationship. Any jealousy that once tainted friendships of my youth has long gone away. I can now honestly admire another woman’s ability to do something better than me without a twinge of longing.
I am so grateful for my friends who have consoled and comforted me through difficult times. I’ve had some bad days in my life, but the day I turned fifty was one of the worst. I did not feel the kind of emotional pain I have experienced with deaths. I did not feel the horror of embarrassment or the devastation of failure. I felt mostly empty, useless, and unloved. My friend Betsy, who doesn’t look a day over forty but has passed the mid-century mark herself, gave me a big hug and some great advice: “It’s terrible. You’re at rock bottom. No one can tell you it’s not bad, because it is. So feel sorry for yourself for a day or two, then suck it up. Trust me, it doesn’t get any worse than this.”
Betsy was right on all counts. Now that I have come to terms with the fact that I am in the second half of my life, I feel surprisingly free. It hasn’t just been because I’ve “sucked it up.” I’ve learned from Naomi and other women that the second half of life is a journey unlike the first. Much of what I counted on to get me through the first half of life will do little to help me in the second. What comes next has to be viewed as an adventure. It is frightening, unsettling, uncomfortable, and unfathomable—but that’s what the best adventures are like!
Friends like Betsy give me both encouragement and tough love. She and I had never met before our first day in the Community Bible Study group. I was just about to compliment her on her purse when she leaned over and said, in a lovely Southern accent, “I love your purse.” We both laughed, and our friendship was off and running. The women in our CBS discussion group became extraordinarily close as we studied the Gospel of John together. We laughed and cried and studied the Bible and prayed for one another. When Betsy’s son was facing a difficult divorce, we prayed for him as if he was our own. When Marita tried to decide if she should return to work, we prayed as if our own careers depended on it. And although a number of us in the group were around the same age, three of the women were considerably older and offered us a shining example of elegance, humor, and joy in the years to come. The group provided a gift of friendships that remained long after we went our separate ways. I’m not sure how I would have made it through the first few days of being fifty if it hadn’t been for Betsy and the others in my Bible study group.
Dale’s Second Calling
My trip to Uganda was life changing. When I saw how many orphans there were in the country, I knew I had to do something to help. Almost everyone I met had taken additional children into their homes, straining their already meager budget. Gloria greeted me with a huge hug and showed me the new bracelets she and her group were stringing. They were perfect, exactly the design I had ordered, and ready to be carried home in the extra suitcases I had brought along.
While I was gone, an article appeared in Sojourners magazine about the bracelets, and I received dozens of orders in a few weeks. I spent hours packing bracelets and sending them to schools and churches. As AIDS Day approached, the word had spread and everyone wanted quantities— within a few days. Then people wanted them for Christmas fairs at churches and Christmas presents for their friends. I could barely keep up. But I always did. It was as if God knew exactly how many I could package up and send out each day.
Some people ask me why I don’t hire someone to package the bracelets. The reason I don’t is that for now I feel called to sit on the floor of my family room and practice the presence of God as I pack the bracelets. It is a humbling and very rewarding task. As I pick up each bracelet, I know it was made by a woman or girl who has had a much more difficult life than I have; and as I send out each package, I know that whoever wears the bracelet may be changed by this simple expression of support. Mostly, though, I have never done anything in my life that has been so beyond my control and taught me more clearly that I am to rely on God every day.
Mentoring
God is calling us women in the second half of life to be encouragers and teachers to younger women. Maybe it means he wants us to just provide a place and time to meet. Perhaps he will call us to start a Bible study. Whatever the case, all he asks of us is an open heart and a willingness to set aside the pride that says, “Oh I couldn’t possibly do that.” Being a mentor doesn’t need to be a major undertaking. Often, it’s just the willingness to put your arm around a younger woman and tell her that she’s going to make it through this phase of life.
Second Calling: Finding Passion & Purpose for the Rest of Your Life
by Dale Hanson Bourke
Available January 2006 from Integrity Publishers
Author interviews, review copies and excerpt permission available upon request.
Contact McClure Muntsinger Public Relations: Pamela McClure, Pamela@mmpublicrelations.com, 615-595-8321