Older women in the church
I teach a Sunday Bible Class at my church for, well, middle-aged women. I was asked recently to teach a class of ladies in their eighties and nineties, probably because the attendance in my class is often pathetic but I’m known to be faithful. I declined to change classes, because I have put a lot of effort for over four years into my “ladies” and even though many have rejected me, these have stayed with me faithfully and we are close.
But teaching middle-aged women is difficult. They are the red-headed stepchildren of the church, I think. They are too old for senior “stuff,” but they have pretty much raised their children and “been there, done that.” If they don’t want to get out of bed for SBS, they don’t have to. And they don’t. Although a huge number of women in the church are in this age group, a lot of them just come to the worship and eschew the fellowship of a SBS, which can be intense.
Of course, over 50% of these women are divorced, widowed, or never married, so they don’t fit in anyway in the church. Women who have husbands go to couples’ classes, although not totally. Three of my ladies are married; the rest are single or single again. My husband does not attend church with me (although he used to; like many men he has lost interest in it or the church lost interest in him, the latter being more likely). So I feel like a single person most of the time, sit by myself in the back, or with a female friend, trying to be inconspicuous. A woman with a husband doesn’t have to worry about conspicuity.
My point is that the church ignores single women, as if they want to be single. “Every pot has a lid” I was told once; it’s not true. Like my kitchen cabinets after twenty-eight years of marriage (on August 8!), there are sometimes more pots than lids, or vice versa. If the church does not welcome the extra pots, who will? No one; they will languish, their energy lost and their needs unmet.
But teaching middle-aged women is difficult. They are the red-headed stepchildren of the church, I think. They are too old for senior “stuff,” but they have pretty much raised their children and “been there, done that.” If they don’t want to get out of bed for SBS, they don’t have to. And they don’t. Although a huge number of women in the church are in this age group, a lot of them just come to the worship and eschew the fellowship of a SBS, which can be intense.
Of course, over 50% of these women are divorced, widowed, or never married, so they don’t fit in anyway in the church. Women who have husbands go to couples’ classes, although not totally. Three of my ladies are married; the rest are single or single again. My husband does not attend church with me (although he used to; like many men he has lost interest in it or the church lost interest in him, the latter being more likely). So I feel like a single person most of the time, sit by myself in the back, or with a female friend, trying to be inconspicuous. A woman with a husband doesn’t have to worry about conspicuity.
My point is that the church ignores single women, as if they want to be single. “Every pot has a lid” I was told once; it’s not true. Like my kitchen cabinets after twenty-eight years of marriage (on August 8!), there are sometimes more pots than lids, or vice versa. If the church does not welcome the extra pots, who will? No one; they will languish, their energy lost and their needs unmet.
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