Something has been on my heart recently. It’s about those missed windows of opportunity that occur in a woman’s life. I grew up in a feminist household so until maybe the last 10 years or so, I believed a lot of the propaganda. Now, I believe some of it and some I dismiss as damaging. Let me explain.
I believe that women should earn as much as a man for equal work, no question about that. I believe that women should get an education and should pursue their passions, buying property and handling money. I am in no way a woman who believes a woman should be at home or a subservient.
That being said, I know so many women who have pursued their dream career only to find themselves in their mid to late thirties and just meeting that man of her dreams. Marrying him, she is approaching 40 when her baby hunger arrives. Frustrated, heart-broken and thousands of dollars later, she is desperate to have a child. Only what has happened is, that she has traded her child bearing days for the corporate ladder and now time has run out. Medicine has tried to keep up but it’s not as successful as we’d like to believe.
There are windows of opportunity in a woman’s life. There is time in a young woman’s life where she is finishing college and heading into her career. She is becoming who is supposed to be and hopefully finding her lifelong spouse. This is a window of opportunity.
There is time in her late-20’s and her 30’s to grab hold of that baby hunger and raise her children. There is nothing wrong or sad about a woman who takes a time-out to do this for herself and her family. I think we demean a woman who chooses to do this and I believe that it is her right to choose for herself what she’d like to do in this season of her life.
Then there is the time in her early 40’s where she once again pursues her passions for herself. This is where the burden comes in for me. I’ve met many women who are in this season of their life and they are only getting started on marriage and family. Unfortunately, for many, their window of opportunity for a child or four has come and gone. We can’t fight nature. I’ve hugged them as they cried because tests have shown that they no longer are in the stage of their life where a baby is possible naturally. I’ve seen their eyes as they explain that they were always told that they could get fertility treatments and have a child. Only fertility treatments are expensive and not always as successful as we’d like to think. There are seasons in a woman’ life and sometimes opportunities are missed.
I think we’ve been told that a woman can do anything a man can do. Sometimes that’s true and sometimes it’s not. A man can have children in old age, a woman can’t. Instead of thinking that her body has betrayed her, we must teach our daughters that we have moments that must be grabbed in life. We must teach that career is not the only enrichment in life and that one day, we’ll look up from our work, to discover that we’ve missed out on some things that we’d like to have. Let’s begin to talk about this.
Pastor Susan 
Wow….this article was sent to me by my mother…it is soo true. I myself have been evaluating this issue for the last four days, and here’s why. I was at a conference this last weekend and one of the speakers was Kris Vallaton of Bethel Church in Redding, CA. He gave us a little spill that has had me thinking. He brought up the issue of abortion and how this issue has arised in our culture and how our society’s value of children has been demeaned. America went through the agricultural age with a high value for children. The children helped with the farm and helped to bring income in their family. They were important to the family. They could do more. Somewhere along the line (after the war sometime) the feminist era creeped in and women had an itch to be comparable, to be valued as much as men. In the industrial age many women entered the workplace and suddenly the children became a burden for the family. Now we need somebody else to watch our children because he have the responsibility to provide just as the man because now we’re equal! Our mindests become as such: The more children we have the more expenses we have and the children are no longer valuable for helping us, but burdensome for taking from us. Many have abortions because the timing is not right, they can’t afford a baby. This has become not just a mindest, but a cultural mindset affecting an entire nation. The laws in place are not a cure for this mentality, it just masks the symptoms. The real problem has come from a cultural shift on our priorities and what we regard as first importance. I have been struggling with this issue even before I attended this conference because for the last few weeks, every time I drop my child off at the sitter’s I think to myself “I should be the one that spends time with my child during the day, loving him, playing with him and teaching him.” When I was little, I was sucked into feminist deceit thinking that women should be just as successful as men and we need to rise up and prove that women are actually superior in many areas. I now see that I don’t need to prove anything to anyone!! I know who I am and whose I am. My career focus has been dramatically changed. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying women shouldn’t work or be successful, God wants to partner with us in our desires so that He can use us wherever we are. The thing is, I have realized the source of many of my desires has come from this prideful, feminist propoganda. This has so touched my heart that I am actually considering what I can do to spend more time at home raising my child and children to come!
Wow! Marina, that hit the nail on the head squarely.