The Rhythm of a Woman's Life

Faithfulness in Youth and Old Age, Singleness and Marriage, Full Houses and Quiet Ones

The past few months we have been doing our Built to Last series, talking about how to recover godly rhythms for a faithful life. Tonight, we conclude with the Rhythm of the Seasons.

Ecclesiastes says:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…” Ecclesiastes 3:1

And later:

“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come.” Ecclesiastes 12:1

Years ago, we rented a house with a second fridge in the basement. I used it to store extra milk and a 60-count box of eggs for our growing family of eight. I used to jokingly send the boys to collect eggs from our “refrigerator chickens.”

It felt like such a gift. With a dry-erase marker, I wrote a little prayer on the freezer door:

“I remember when I prayed for what I now have.”

That sentence has rebuked me more than once.

Tonight, I want to talk about the mega seasons of life. Bigger than daily disciplines, date nights, chores, budgets, or even Lord’s Day habits. I want to talk about the large movements that shape and redefine you, the rhythms within the rhythms.

There are seasons of singleness, marriage, raising children, releasing children, abundance, scarcity, grief, health, loneliness, and deep friendship.

One of the strange things about human nature is that we often long desperately for the very things we later take for granted. A single woman may pray for a husband and later struggle with discontent toward the very man she begged God to provide. A young couple may pray for financial breathing room, only to discover later that wealth brings its own pressures, temptations, and fears.

Each new season reshapes what faithfulness requires.

Some of you are in survival seasons. The children are little. The budget is tight. You feel behind. But one day your house may be quiet enough that you would gladly trade convenience for one more noisy evening around the dinner table.

Others are watching children leave home. That is disorienting too. You spent years building a household, and suddenly the shape of the household changes.

Ecclesiastes teaches us to receive the season we are in instead of constantly fantasizing about another one. God appoints every season and wastes none of them.

YOUTH AND AGED

Scripture reminds us that youthful beauty is fleeting. Beauty fades, skin wrinkles, and strength weakens. My husband likes to say that we start like grapes but finish like raisins.

But we must not diminish beauty. God made the world beautiful. He filled creation with color, fragrance, music, mountains, flowers, sunsets, and stars. And He made women to reflect something beautiful too.

Proverbs 31:30 says, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” That verse does not condemn beauty. It teaches us that beauty by itself cannot sustain a life.

Youth is a gift. But if a woman walks with God, outward beauty can mature into something more significant: spiritual beauty. Poise and grace.

Think of a little girl learning gymnastics. My daughter started out clumsy, with arms flying everywhere and awkward landings. But with practice, her movements become graceful and measured.

So it is with a godly woman.

Over time, she learns when to speak and when to stay quiet. She learns how to comfort, how to steady a room, how to dress appropriately, when to add something and when to simplify. She learns to carry herself with dignity and warmth.

A man with gravitas brings moral weight into a room. A godly older woman brings poise, beauty, relief, and comfort. That kind of beauty often takes decades to develop.

When I was fifteen, I met a pastor’s wife named Vi Goodrich. She taught at a women’s retreat on abiding in Christ. She was in her forties, a grandmother, with wrinkles and grey hair. But she was radiant. She had joy, kindness, warmth, gentleness, and love for God’s Word.

I remember thinking, “This is the kind of woman I want to become.”

Later, I met Mrs. Julia Major, a widow in her nineties. She was a shut-in, and I began visiting her with my three little boys: Hudson, Athan, and Caed. At first, I thought I was ministering to her. But she ministered to me.

She knew Scripture. She loved hymns. She asked how she could pray for me. She laughed, beamed, held my hand, and testified to God’s faithfulness. She was beautiful.

Miss Julia lived to be ninety-seven and finished her race strong. In the Lord, beauty grows with age.

SINGLE AND MARRIED

It is normal for a young woman to desire marriage.

When I was a little girl, Disney princesses were still princesses. They were beautiful, elegant women in search of a manly, heroic prince. I loved Sleeping Beauty, especially the scene where Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora danced in the woods.

I also loved The Princess Bride. I hoped for my own Westley to come for me. I wanted true love and a courageous man who could lead me through the fire swamps of life.

Like many girls, I had a list. I wanted my future husband to be tall, dark, handsome, musical, athletic, and funny.

The Lord sent me my “farm boy” when I met Michael. He was tall and devastatingly handsome, but blonde. He could tan, which is more than I could say for myself. He could strum a few guitar chords. He had been captain of his football and wrestling teams. I thought he would be serious, but he turned out to be funny too.

I met him when I was fourteen and married him at nineteen. I have spent most of my life loving him, and I am thankful for our marriage.

But marriage has challenges.

I had only become a Christian a few months before we started dating. Michael played a major role in my early spiritual growth, but I had very little time to mature spiritually on my own before being attached to another person. That is one reason 1 Corinthians 7 speaks of the blessings of singleness. Singleness allows a person to be less divided in attention to the Lord.

If you have dreamed of Prince Charming since childhood, and now you are older and still single, you may think of singleness only as a bad thing. It can be painful. But it is not meaningless.

Singleness is real life.

It brings freedom, flexibility, focused spiritual growth, service, ministry, and a unique ability to devote yourself to the Lord.

Marriage is glorious, but it does not complete you or fix you. Michael and I nearly divorced in our early years. Marriage sanctifies you because it places you in covenant with another sinner. Christ alone makes you whole.

We also need to remember that many women who are not single now may one day be single again. Widowhood is a common part of female life. My friend Mary Wolff was married three times and never divorced once. She outlived all three husbands and lived to ninety-three.

So one way or another, life contains seasons of singleness. Our ultimate hope must not be anchored in marriage, but in Christ. He has slain the dragon and knows the fire swamp, and his love cannot be stopped by death.

FULL NEST AND EMPTY NEST

The years of a full house are exhausting and wonderful.

There are years when you cannot go to the bathroom alone. There are knocks, cries, and little fingers under the door. Children follow you everywhere. A chubby hand is always reaching up. Someone wants a sip of your drink or a bite of your sandwich. You may hide in a closet to eat a cookie or make a phone call.

I remember thinking Susanna Wesley was clever when I learned she trained her nineteen children not to disturb her when she flipped her apron over her head so she could pray and study Scripture. I think she was on to something. I wonder if she ever also had a cookie.

But one day, the noises change.

Our oldest son, Hudson, got married in January to my daughter-in-law, Grace. He had graduated and was working at Maddox, but he was still living at home. During wedding preparation, he slowly moved boxes to their rental house while still sleeping in his room with Cyprian.

Then, the Monday before the wedding, he asked me to help move his desk after work. That was the first night he slept there.

Just like that, he had moved out.

Gone from my household.

No more hearing him get ready for work. No more clanking pots as he cooked something delicious. No more laughter from his room. No more ordinary coming and going.

It was harder than I expected.

Part of motherhood in this season is learning how to stay involved without overreaching. How to advise without controlling. How to encourage while allowing your children to build their own lives.

Parents move from commanders with small children to coaches with older children to consultants with grown children, and that last shift is often the hardest.

But the empty nest also brings new opportunities.

The church desperately needs older women. Younger women need discipleship, practical wisdom, encouragement, help with children, and examples of how to love husbands, love children, and manage households.

Not all women had wise mothers. Many need older women to steady them.

Vi Goodrich affected me in two or three interactions. Sandy Fultz modeled this too. She had raised sons and was married to a retired military man and dentist. By the time we knew them, dementia had taken hold of him. Sometimes he would stand and wander during church, and Michael or a deacon would gently guide him back.

Sandy cared for him faithfully until he went to be with the Lord in 2020. She still poured into her family, church, and younger women. She played a major role in the salvation and spiritual maturity of my mother-in-law.

She once told me one of the hardest parts of aging was finding peers who still wanted to grow spiritually. Many older people rest on past victories.

The empty nest is a gift. Rest, travel, enjoy your husband and grandchildren, and learn something new. But do not waste that freedom on shallow pursuits. As responsibilities lessen in some areas, deepen your devotion in others.

SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE

Life cycles through scarcity and abundance.

Sometimes you have money. Sometimes you do not. Sometimes you have deep friendships. Sometimes you feel alone. Sometimes life feels fruitful and stable. Other times everything feels doubtful.

Early in our marriage, Michael had good jobs, I was working, we had strong Christian friends, we were church planting in Cincinnati, hosting gatherings, and raising two little boys. Life was busy and full.

We were in abundance.

Then in 2009, after moving to Indiana during a recession, everything changed. The church plant ended. We were broke and in debt. Michael lost jobs and worked through a temp agency. I dug through couch cushions for change to buy diapers.

The four of us lived in someone’s basement for months, then moved into a sad little house on the edge of town. We had no washer and dryer. We were down to one vehicle. I had to drop Michael off at work so I could run errands. We kept popping tires because work trucks dropped nails on our road.

People were friendly, but we did not have friends. I felt isolated and lonely.

Slowly, the season changed. Michael got steady work. We moved into a townhouse with a washer and dryer, though the dryer kept malfunctioning. We replaced it twice before realizing the problem was lint buildup in the dryer duct.

By our third year there, we had good friends. We added three more children: two who stayed with us and one who went to heaven. There were tears and laughter, and the Lord grew us.

Then we moved to South Carolina. We had another season of financial difficulty, loneliness, new babies, new trials, and new joys.

That is often how life works: feast and famine.

Philippians 4 says, “I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content.”

Paul frames this as something learned, not assumed.

Scarcity teaches dependence; abundance tests gratitude. In abundance, we are tempted toward self-sufficiency. In scarcity, we are tempted toward despair. God uses both.

The Christian woman must learn to walk faithfully in both.

Your life is founded in Christ, your sure and steady anchor, and that foundation holds regardless of your bank account, your friendships, or what tomorrow brings.

CONCLUSION

In our present home, I have a dry-erase board decorated like a coffee shop menu. It says Casa de Foster and lists our hot and cold beverages: French press, espresso beans, iced coffee, and Cedar’s current kombucha brew.

At the bottom, I wrote the same prayer from the freezer years ago, but I added to it:

“I remember when I prayed for what I now have. My cup overfloweth.”

Faithfulness is the goal: to become the kind of woman who, whether she is fifteen or ninety-five, married or widowed, surrounded by children or sitting quietly in an empty house, can still say:

“The Lord has been good to me.”

*Editor’s Note: This was my attempt to cut my wife’s teaching transcript and notes by two-thirds to a size people might actually read online. I did my best to retain all her major points, illustrations, and applications. We will post the entire unedited piece later this year.