Lonely in Midlife? I Was So Wrong About Women

I would have rather worked with 20 men than 3 women. I'm very glad to say that I was so wrong.

That's a hard sentence for a woman who now spends her days serving women. But it's true. And if you've been feeling lonely in midlife, even in a full church on Sunday morning, I think my story might be for you.

Here's what the research says first. In December 2025, AARP reported that 40% of adults 45 and older are lonely, up from 35% in 2018. For adults ages 45 to 59, it was 46%. Nearly half. And 45% of the lonely people in that research said they have fewer friends now than they did five years ago.

That's a lot of us sitting in pews, at ballgames and at supper tables, surrounded by people, with no one to call.

What I believed about women

I started leading young. For most of my career, I thought I didn't like working with women.

The rare ones I loved were focused. They weren't petty. They weren't jealous. They weren't keeping score. But with others, I felt a wedge. Some of the gossip hurt me, and I carried that hurt a long time.

So I kept a little distance, and I told myself that was just how women are.

What I see now

Looking back, I see it differently. Much of what hurt me came from hurt. Some of those women were reacting to the load they carried, while I, as the boss, pushed them to do more and do the hard things. They weren't against me. They were tired, and they were carrying more than I knew.

Now that I'm older, and I've lived what I've lived, I see the beauty of women. We want to create a whole environment where the people we love can flourish. And when we can't do it the way we want, we feel like failures.

That isn't pettiness. That's love that has run out of room.

It's a little ironic that God later called me to help women. I see the old hurt now as a seedbed. Something good grew up out of it.

Lonely in midlife: why friendships slip, and why they matter

The longest study of adult life I know of is the Harvard Study of Adult Development. It began in 1938 and has followed its participants for nearly 80 years. Its clearest finding, reported in the Harvard Gazette in 2017: close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. The people who were most satisfied in their relationships at 50 were the healthiest at 80. The study's director put it simply: tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too.

Read that again with your coffee. Your friendships aren't extra. They're part of taking care of the body and mind God gave you.

And yet in midlife, friendship is usually the first thing we drop. Not because we stop loving people, but because the calendar fills with everybody's needs, and coffee with a friend feels like something we'll do "after the holidays."

Two women who stuck

I've always been fascinated by the women of the Bible, and one of my favorite pictures of friendship is Naomi and Ruth. Naomi had lost nearly everything. She told her daughter-in-law to go back home, where life would be easier. Ruth wouldn't hear of it:

"And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:" Ruth 1:16

Naomi walked into Bethlehem bitter and empty-handed. By the end of the book, the women of that town are gathered around her, blessing the Lord with her. She didn't get there alone. A woman stuck by her, and a town full of women rejoiced with her.

That's the kind of friendship I was missing all those years. That's the kind God still builds.

One thing to try today

The research is clear that relationships matter. So here's one simple thing, and it only takes a few minutes. Think of one woman you've been meaning to call. Not text. Call. On your drive home or while the coffee brews, dial her number and say, "I was thinking about you."

That's it. You don't need a plan. You just need to pick up the phone.

Picture a fuller table

Now picture this with me. It's December. You're at a table with women of every age, and somebody tells a story that makes the whole table laugh until someone snorts and that makes it worse. The coffee goes cold because nobody wants to get up. A woman you barely knew in October waves at you across the church parking lot like you've been friends for years.

That's not a fantasy. That's what happens when women decide to stop keeping score and start keeping each other.

Come sit with a room full of women Nov 12

This is a big part of why we're gathering for Make Room for You: An Evening Before the Season Begins.

Thursday, November 12, the doors open at 6:30 with a coffee bar and a Self-Care Marketplace with local self-care makers. At 7:00 we'll worship and sit still with God for a few minutes. You'll write one thing you're carrying and leave it in the Lay It Down basket. We'll move a little, chair-friendly, to an upbeat worship song. You'll take home three cards for the season. And there's the Joy Jar, door prizes, a photo booth, and a room full of women who'll laugh with you.

It's free, in the Youth Center at Meades Branch Freewill Baptist Church, 9 Vanhoose Hollow, Louisa. Save your seat at Make Room for You or text (606) 483-1001. A seat count helps us plan the coffee, the handouts and the chairs.

And bring her. The woman you just called.

I was so wrong about women. I'm so glad.

If loneliness has turned into something heavier than a busy season, please talk with your pastor, a counselor, or your doctor.

What the research says

AARP, "New AARP Research: Loneliness Is on the Rise, Affecting 4 in 10 Older Adults" (Dec 3, 2025): https://www.aarp.org/press/releases/2025-12-3-new-aarp-research-loneliness-is-on-the-rise-affecting-4-in-10-older-adults

Harvard Gazette, "Good genes are nice, but joy is better" (Harvard Study of Adult Development, Apr 11, 2017): https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/

God Rejoices Over You, and You Didn't Earn It

Picture the face you think God makes when He looks at you.

Not on your best Sunday. On a plain Thursday, when supper ran late, you were short with the girl at the drive-thru window, and your Bible has been under a stack of mail since the weekend.

For a lot of us, that face is a sigh. Patient, maybe. Kind, even. But tired. The look of someone who loves you because He promised to, and who is still waiting on you to get it together.

Here's what most of us have never let ourselves believe: God rejoices over you. Scripture doesn't say He puts up with you, or loves you while looking the other way. It says He rejoices over you, with singing. And you didn't do one thing to earn it.

What Zephaniah 3:17 says about God rejoicing over you

"The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing." (Zephaniah 3:17, KJV)

Read it slowly and count the verbs. He will save. He will rejoice. He will rest. He will joy. Every one of them is God doing something, and every one of them is aimed at you. You aren't the one singing in this verse. You're the one being sung over.

Look at where He is, too: in the midst of thee. He isn't up in the balcony with a clipboard. He's in the middle of your kitchen, your car, your 2 AM.

Zephaniah is not a soft little book. For most of the book, the prophet tells God's people the plain truth about where they've gone wrong, and it isn't pretty. Then, near the very end, the tone turns. God promises to save the ones who limped and gather the ones who'd been pushed out. And right in the middle of those promises, after all the hard words, He sings.

That matters. This verse wasn't spoken to people who had it all together. It was spoken to people who had been warned, had failed, and had come up short. That's the crowd He sings over.

The line we rush past

Tucked in the middle of the verse is a phrase that's easy to skim: he will rest in his love.

The Hebrew in these verses is hard to pin down. Bible scholar Margaret Odell, writing for Working Preacher, notes that the phrase can be read as God being silent in His love, and she reads that silence as full acceptance, with old conflicts left in the past.

Think about what that means if you keep a running list of your own failures. You've been going over it at night: the sharp word, the skipped quiet time, the thing you promised and didn't do. He isn't lying awake going over it with you. He's quiet about it. Then He sings.

Why it's so hard to believe God rejoices over you

Most of us have heard "God loves you" so many times that it has started to sound like a sign at the bank: true, but flat. We sing about how much we love Him. We pray to love Him more. We hear far less about how He feels when He looks at us.

So we fill in the blank ourselves, and we fill it in with the voice we use on ourselves.

When we asked women on our anonymous form what they wanted six weeks from now, six out of 25 named something like "how I view myself," "the way I feel about myself," or simply, "To feel whole." Not a new routine. Not a cleaner house. Just to stop seeing themselves the way they do.

Here's the part nobody admits: we assume God sees us the way we see ourselves. We take our own tired sigh and put it on His face. Then, because we've decided He's disappointed, we keep our distance and try harder, hoping to earn our way into a look we already have.

You can't earn a song somebody is already singing.

What it looks like to let Him sing

So what do you do with a verse like this? Not a project. Not a plan to become the kind of woman He'd want to sing over. He already does.

Try this tonight. Before you turn out the light, read Zephaniah 3:17 aloud, slowly, and everywhere it says "thee," say your own name. It will feel awkward. Read it anyway. Then lie still for one minute and let it be true without adding "but."

If you'd like more quiet minutes like that, the free Make Room for Joy guide is seven short days of exactly this: a verse, about ten minutes, and room to hear it.

Tomorrow, when you catch yourself bracing for that sigh, after the late supper or the sharp word or the Bible still under the mail, stop and listen for the real sound in the room. The Lord thy God is in the midst of thee. He is mighty. And He is singing.

If you'd like to hear a room full of women sing back to Him, come to Make Room for You on Thursday, November 12, 7:00 to 8:30 PM near Louisa. It's a free evening of worship and rest before the holiday rush starts. Save your seat here.

Is It Okay to Enjoy Your Life?

Have you ever caught yourself enjoying something and felt like you'd better stop?

Maybe it was sitting on the porch a few minutes longer than you meant to. The sun was warm, the leaves were turning on the hill, and for once nobody needed anything. Then the thought slid in: You've got clothes in the dryer. Get up.

Or you laughed so hard at supper you had to wipe your eyes, and right after, a little voice said it was a bit much.

A lot of us were raised to believe that work is holy and rest is something you earn. We know how to serve. We know how to show up with a casserole and stay to wash the dishes. What we don't know how to do is enjoy something without feeling like we got away with it.

So let me ask the question out loud, because I think a lot of us are wondering it quietly: Is it okay to enjoy your life?

What 1 Timothy 6:17 says

Paul was writing to Timothy about people who had plenty, and he warned them not to put their hope in money. Fair enough. But look at how he finishes the sentence:

"Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." (1 Timothy 6:17, KJV)

Who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.

Not "all things to manage." Not "all things to feel guilty about." To enjoy. And He doesn't hand them out in thimblefuls. He gives richly.

The warning in this verse is about where we put our trust. The gift in this verse is joy itself. God isn't nervous about us enjoying our lives. He's the One who handed us the good things in the first place.

The good things are His idea

Think about the things that make you happy that don't cost a dime.

The smell of coffee before anybody else is up. A grandbaby falling asleep on your chest. The first cool morning in September. A good hymn sung loud by people who can't carry a tune. Biscuits that turned out just right. The way the fog sits in the hollow before the sun burns it off.

You didn't invent any of that. He did. He made a world with taste and color and music and laughter in it when He could have made it gray and useful. That tells you something about His heart.

When you enjoy a good gift, you're not stealing from Him. You're receiving from Him. There's a difference, and it matters.

Enjoying it is a way of saying thank you

Picture giving a gift to someone you love. You picked it out with care. And she opens it, says "Oh, that's nice," and puts it in a drawer because she doesn't feel like she deserves it.

That would break your heart a little, wouldn't it?

I wonder how many gifts we've put in the drawer. The afternoon off we didn't take. The friend we didn't call back because we were too busy. The hobby we gave up because it felt selfish. The quiet minutes we filled with one more chore.

Enjoying what God gives isn't selfish. It's gratitude you can see. It's taking the gift out of the drawer and using it, and letting Him watch you smile.

Try this before the season gets busy

This week, pick one ordinary thing you love and do it on purpose. Don't rush it, and don't apologize for it.

Sit on the porch with your coffee until it's gone. Call the friend who makes you laugh. Bake something just because you want to eat it, not because somebody's coming. Take the long way home past the river.

And while you're doing it, say one short prayer: Thank You for this. That's all. You're not wasting time. You're receiving a gift from the One who "giveth us richly all things to enjoy."

A whole evening to enjoy

If it's been a while since you did something just because it was good, I'd love to give you a night like that.

Make Room for You is Thursday, November 12, two weeks from today. The coffee bar opens at 6:30, and we'll go from 7:00 to 8:30 in the Youth Center at Meades Branch Freewill Baptist Church in Louisa. There's worship, a few quiet minutes, door prizes, the Joy Jar, a photo booth, and a room full of women who are ready to laugh. It's free. Save your seat here.

Come enjoy it. You're allowed. He made it that way on purpose.

Cassandra

Dreading the Holidays? January 1 Used to Be My Hardest Day

If you're already dreading the holidays a little, I want to tell you about my January 1.

For years, it was one of the hardest days of my whole year. Not because of the dishes or the decorations waiting to come down. Because of the guilt. I'd wake up on the first day of a new year and feel the shame settle in: another year gone, and I still hadn't put myself first.

I would count the days until the season was over. And when it was finally over, I didn't feel rested. I felt behind.

If I'm honest, I wasn't living those Decembers. I was existing. I was only surviving.

Dreading the holidays, even with a small family

Here's the part that surprises people. I didn't even have a big family. No house full of cousins, no three Christmas dinners in one day. I just put so much pressure on myself.

The right decorations. The traditions I wanted to start. The picture in my head of how it was all supposed to look. I still don't have the right decorations. I still don't have all the traditions I wanted. I'm still not good at it.

Maybe your list looks different from mine. Maybe it's the elves and the matching pajamas, or the casserole you've brought to the same dinner for twenty years, or the gifts you're already adding up in your head. The details change. The feeling doesn't. You get to the end of the season worn thin, and January 1 shows up like a report card you didn't want.

And somewhere in all of that, the season stops feeling like it's about Him.

What God wants for this season

This is what turned it for me. I know God doesn't want us going through the season about His Son feeling that way.

Read what the angel told the shepherds:

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." Luke 2:10

Good tidings of great joy. To all people. That includes the woman wrapping presents at midnight and the woman counting down the days until it's over. The news that started this whole season was joy, and it was meant for her too.

The shepherds weren't ready. They were out in a field doing their jobs, at night, probably tired. Nobody had decorated anything. And they were the first ones to hear it.

You don't have to have the right decorations to get the good tidings. You never did.

Picture a different January 1

So picture something with me.

It's January 1. The house is still a little messy. The tree is still up. But you wake up, and the first thing you feel isn't shame. It's peace. Maybe even a little joy.

You remember the night you laughed so hard with your friends that your coffee went cold. The worship song you sang in the car in December with the windows down, cold air and all. The quiet ten minutes on a Tuesday morning when you sat with your Bible before anyone else was up, and it felt like He was sitting with you.

Nothing around you was perfect. The season was still busy. But this time you were in it, not just getting through it.

That's what I'm praying for, for you and for me. Not a perfect December. A present one. And a January 1 that feels like a beginning instead of a verdict.

A few things to try between now and Thanksgiving:

• Write down the one tradition you love most. Not the ten you think you should keep. The one that makes you happy. Protect that one.

• Pick one morning a week that's just yours, even for ten minutes. Put it on the calendar like anyone else's appointment.

• When the guilt starts talking, answer it with Luke 2:10. Out loud if you need to. Good tidings of great joy, to all people. That's you.

• Say yes to one thing this season just because it's fun.

Start before the season does: Nov 12

This is exactly why we're hosting Make Room for You: An Evening Before the Season Begins. I don't want another woman to reach January 1 the way I used to. So we're gathering before the season starts, while there's still time to walk into it differently.

Thursday, November 12, the doors open at 6:30. There's a coffee bar and a Self-Care Marketplace with local self-care makers. At 7:00 we'll worship and sit still with God for a few minutes. You'll write down one thing you're carrying and leave it in the Lay It Down basket. We'll move a little, chair-friendly, to an upbeat worship song. You'll take home three cards for the season, sized for your purse. And there's the Joy Jar, door prizes, a photo booth, and a room full of women who'll laugh with you.

It's free, in the Youth Center at Meades Branch Freewill Baptist Church, 9 Vanhoose Hollow, Louisa. Save your seat at Make Room for You or text (606) 483-1001. A seat count helps us plan the coffee, the handouts and the chairs.

Bring a friend. Especially the one who already sounds tired when she talks about Christmas.

I can't promise you a perfect December. I can tell you the season started with good tidings of great joy, and that joy has your name on it. Let's walk into January already steady, together.

If this season is heavy for reasons deeper than a busy calendar, please talk with your pastor, a counselor, or your doctor.