“I thought I would be actively engaged in reaching my neighbors with the gospel. That is what I dreamed and trained for the past several years,” the young mother explained to me with eyes downcast. “Between homeschooling, challenging shopping, preparing unfamiliar food, and caring for the children and house, I hardly have any time or energy for outreach in our overseas location.” Disappointment showed clearly in her voice and expression.

In my years of women’s ministry in the U.S., I found similar conversations in different contexts but with a common theme. Women feel pressure to do it all…career/work, mothering, homemaking, hospitality, evangelism, and community volunteering. 

When we adopt faulty cultural messages that choosing one season for a time will demand a high cost in career advancement or require sacrifice in marital blessings or reduce chances for Kingdom service, we basically question God’s pre-ordained destiny and power to provide for us. Or we lack trust in resting in our current season of life with its special creative potential, worrying we are missing something if we don’t grab for everything we can today, right now.

Medical data shows the consequence of heaping stress and anxiety upon our bodies. Whereas breast cancer used to be the #1 killer of women, now we join men in heart disease as the leading cause of death. Currently more women than men die from heart disease and the numbers exceed deaths from lung and breast cancer victims combined. Even though most fatalities occur in older women, heart disease is now the third-leading cause of death for women between the ages of 25 and 44.

I think God made female bodies with distinct seasons and we do well to consider how to maximize each stage, whether educational, career pursuits, or motherhood, or singleness, or the empty nest, or retirement.

Let’s be wise women and allow God to plant us in the right season at the right time, keeping balance and margin as a sign of trust that whatever we might be missing will cycle back in his best timing.