My poor middle son complains all the time about the strange spelling of his name: Eliot. I continually tell him that it comes from a literary giant, T.S. Eliot, but it does little to assuage his annoyance. Hopefully, one day he will understand.

As a lover of T.S. Eliot from the first time I read his poetry in my high school English class, I keep appreciating his work more deeply each decade. In particular, one line from IV of Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday” which used to make me scratch my head is beginning to make sense to me during these middle years of adulthood: “Teach us to care and not care.”

Teach us to care but to care rightly about the right things. Teach us not to care disproportionally about things that don’t matter in the long run.

The Crosshairs of Perimenopause

The strange years of perimenopause (the ten or so years before menopause) position middle-aged women in a precarious spot between apathy and overexertion. As women during these years are stripped of the illusion of control, it is tempting to throw in the towel and become indifferent. The social media group called “The We Do Not Care Club” plays humorously on this apathy. This mantra for women in perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause leads into hysterical announcements of what do not care about anymore: we don’t care if we start a task and don’t finish it; we will get to it when we want. We don’t care if you find all kinds of things under coach; we want to know why are you looking under our couches anyway. The humor hits close to home. There is such a temptation in these years to throw in the towel and give in to indifference. We can’t control our sleep, our body temperature, our moods, or our weight; so it makes sense that we would begin to slip into a creeping sense of apathy.

If we are able to avoid that ditch, it is likely that we might slip into an opposite, but equally dangerous trap: overexertion to compensate for all the changes we cannot control. If we are gaining weight, we should simply work harder, walk more steps, and eat more protein. If we are feeling overlooked in a world that favors the young, then we ought to double down on our efforts to keep up. When we care too much about our wrinkling faces or our disappearing estrogen which makes our minds fuzzy and our inflammation increase (estrogen carries a heavier, more wide-reaching load than we realized), we will be devastated daily by the slow degradation of our strength and beauty. We will wear ourselves and those around us out.

As one of the many women caught in the crosshairs of perimenopause, T.S. Eliot’s simple prayer, “Teach us to care and not to care” has been incredibly helpful to me.

As a believer in Christ, I have a deeper motivation for all that I do. I live to glorify God in all things (Colossians 3:17). Thus, as tempting as it is to stop caring simply because I know how little I can control, I simply cannot stop caring. To do so would not only dishonor God but also be a disservice to myself and my loved ones. On the other hand, I cannot simply throw myself into working harder to overcome the effects of aging which ripple far past the obvious somatic changes. To do so would mean to neglect the greater, quieter, more subtle soul work that lives on well past this body will. In a world that cares entirely too much about the external and which favors the young, these years are invitation to join Christ in what those things for which he cares deeply.

Caring & Not Caring

I will keep taking the collagen supplement in my coffee, and I will walk a billion steps a day. I care about this body, this temporary tent, as the Apostle Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians. But I am learning to care with a right sense of proportion, placing far greater weight on the “hidden person of the heart” which “in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:4). I will continue to care about my son’s and their choices, but I will not care to the point of overreaching for control which is not mine. God must deal directly with his sons; my part is to nurture and point and pray. Oh, Lord, teach me to not care in a way that is healthily differentiated as they grow into men. I will care about the people around me, but teach me to not care so much what they think of me in so doing. To love others more, I need to need them less.

These are the lessons happening below the roiling water lines in the lives of perimenopausal women. Our waistlines might be growing, but our capacity to lean into Christ and to look more like him is growing alongside them. Learning to care and not to care is not a quick lesson; perhaps that is why God saw fit to give us the duration of a decade or so. Sister, as you are not caring quite so much about your linens being ironed, Christ cares deeply for you. He sees it all and knows it all, whether the ObGyn runs the labs or doesn’t. He knows the complex systems he created, and he can be trusted with helping us learn to live within them as they change. He is a great high priest who can sympathize with our weakness. He doesn’t have office hours, because his door is always open to his daughters. We may not know where we fit into society at large in these liminal years, but we know how he will receive us. He will hear us. He will see us. We can draw near to his throne of grace with confidence that we will receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16–18).

Keep pressing into him, my perimenopausal pals. He is worthy, and his work can be trusted.