Menopause, make up and public school
I hate makeup on my face. I haven’t really been one to wear much of it and only started “covering” my face with a concealer because things have shown up that I would like to “conceal”. Menopause sucks in so many ways, in more ways than I anticipated or thought. And public school has been a gift from God!
For the last four years, I have struggled to get my body back in balance. My last child was born 10 years ago and really that was when it all started but the last few years particularly have been hard. I found out last week that I am officially in menopause. That day, I sent a few friends a text message expressing my mixed emotions.
Since this discovery, I have felt some relief because now I know why certain things are happening or not happening, if you know what I mean, but I also feel grief. I am remembering when I had three children under three and a middle-schooler and recall a day when a friend was sharing her discovery of menopause with me while I was pulling my hair out and couldn’t possibly imagine feeling grief over no more babies, while she was mourning her new reality. Now I know…
Between bouts of a need to cry and for what seems to be no apparent reason, spending money on quality make up to conceal “things”, remembering post-partum blues I experienced after each birth, flashes of my new season of life and then forgetting what I went to the kitchen for, I go back to what I know is true and doesn’t change – God – and for that I weep tears of humility and great love for my King.
Interestingly, according to medical professionals, the fluctuation in hormones during post-partum is the same in menopause – I guess we really do go full circle.
But there are reasons to cry and grieve.
Several things come to mind: first, how I placed my identity in my children or (motherhood), that I came to a point recently when I really wasn’t sure who I was anymore, and that my beauty was more about having babies and being a mom than being Michelle. The second thing that comes to mind is it’s almost as if the last 26 years of my life (the age range of my children) is sitting in a box in front of me and I have an aerial view of it all! Not that I have an “empty nest” but with teens still at home, and three grown adult children I feel strange sometimes.
I see many mothers around me that seem so worn thin and weary. They are in the box of motherhood and can hardly see above. Which takes me back to the last four years and brings to me to today and a recent turn of events that seems to fit nicely with everything that is changing – we made the decision to send our children to public school and what feels like subjecting my children to Satan yet I see very clearly now that this was straight from the hand of God, that’s right, that’s what I just said, I AM A CHRISTIAN AND USED TO HOME SCHOOL AND I SENT MY CHILDREN TO PUBLIC SCHOOL…
You probably don’t want to mess with me on this because I am menopausal!
But I had to ask myself: what type of atmosphere have we created in the Church that I feel the need to be defensive about putting my children in public school, where does all this come from? (I am leaving these as rhetorical questions) I love my children and care very much about their spiritual state and perhaps God asks some of us to entrust our children to him and let them go sooner and in different ways like Hannah who promised God that she would give her only son Samuel to the priest hood where he would be surrounded by Eli’s evil sons!
Obviously I am not saying that one turn of events caused the other but God is using menopause, make up and public school to show me that there are seasons to everything and the only thing that doesn’t change is him!
As I walk through this process and grieve what I have “lost”, I am encouraged to know there are also things to celebrate, like my new found desire to wear makeup!
#menopause #motherhood #Hannah #grief #Homeschooling #comforter #seasonsoflife #publicschool #God