Aging in Spirit: A Woman’s Journey to God

By Karen Kaigler-Walker

Does God expect women who've lived faithfully most or all our lives to continue to grow in Christ as we age into our later decades? Absolutely! Not only does God want us to keep on maturing, but God provides the path to spiritual growth. God hardwired us to blossom into a new realm of spirituality as we age. Aging in Spirit provides a blueprint for developing the type of greater love, compassion, understanding, and acceptance that Jesus taught as we move into our elder years so we can continue to be the hands and feet of God until the end of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666746303

Karen Kaigler-Walker

Karen Kaigler-Walker is a writer, speaker, and blogger on women’s spirituality. She is a professor emerita in marketing and psychology at Woodbury University in Burbank, California and former adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. She earned her BS and MS at Texas Tech University, MA in theology at Fuller Seminary, and PhD at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Positive Aging: Every Woman’s Quest for Wisdom and Beauty (1997).

Book preview

Prologue

Dear sister,

Thank you for buying Aging in Spirit. If you’re like me, you look for company as you wend your way to God. I hope you come to think of me and this book as fellow travelers: sharing stories, listening, offering advice, pointing out a surer path, looking out for rocks and potholes, asking questions, and offering support in the name of the one who loved us first.

As with any travel, this journey will be enhanced if you keep a journal as you go through the chapters. Later, like going back through vacation photos, you can return to your journal and relive the moments. Unlike vacation pics, however, this journal not only will allow you to see specific entries but also allow you to track your growth during the journey.

Remember as you read that spiritual growth doesn’t take a linear or a single path. We slip, slide back, leap forward, have a time-out now and then, and take different courses. We will usually get lost on a side path and must retrace our steps. There is no timekeeper. Like fruit on a tree, the components of spirituality don’t ripen at the same time. Some will blossom and ripen early, while you may wonder whether some will ever ripen. But, as in the parable of the fig tree (Luke 13:6–9), they just need more time to produce. Be patient with yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to guide your way.

As Brian McLaren writes in Naked Spirituality, Through these seasons we shape a spiritual life that is deep, honest, and strong. The point isn’t to stay in spring or summer forever, nor is the point to get to (or through) winter as soon as possible, any more than the point of life is advancing from infancy to old age as soon as possible. No, the point is to live each stage well, to learn well what each day and season have to teach, to live and enjoy life, and bear the good fruits of a life with God through all of life’s seasons.¹

As you read, ask God to open your heart and mind.

In Christ,

Karen

December 2022

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The following is a list of assumptions and suggestions that will help you navigate the book.

1.God is love, light, and life.

2.Love is the tie that binds all else together.

3.God is the ground of our being.

4.I use the word kin-dom, as opposed to kingdom, to remind us that we live, work, and have our being in the kin-dom of all God’s creation.

5.We age and are transformed as we carry out our day-to-day lives in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. Don’t wait for what I call the big moments to come. They will, but they’re meant for times when you need a boost or make a major change in course, not for caring you through your journey

6.Every day and every place are sacred because they are part of the kin-dom.

7.Even as mature Christians, we need to be pushed to continue to mature in the Holy Spirit.

8.We age in Spirit when we are challenged by the Holy Spirit to get out of our comfort zone. If something you read in this book agitates you, creates a negative reaction, causes you to become emotional, and/or causes denial, God is giving you a heads up that this is an area which needs attention and work. Rather than pooh-poohing or speeding past these God-prompts, ask God to show you where you need help.

9.Spirituality isn’t something we learn, believe in, or merely learn about. It comes from a holy longing for God at the core of our being. Thus, we deepen our spirituality through spiritual practices, or what many theologians call spiritual disciplines. At end of each chapter you’ll find a spiritual practice that will help you relate to what you have read.

10.Each chapter opens and closes with Points to Ponder. Take a few moments to think on each point before you move on. Similarly, throughout the book now and then I will prompt you consider a point before moving. Please do.

11.Whenever the word spirit is capitalized, I’m referring to the Holy Spirit.

12.Most examples I use come from my life, the lives of people who are close to me, or accounts I can verify. You won’t find many negative examples. First because they can be hurtful, second, over the years I’ve found that negative examples usually don’t create a positive effect. All names have been changed other than Bud’s, my husband, my parents, and my BFF Zelda.

1

. McLaren, Naked Spirituality, loc.

602

.

Introduction

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

—Ps 19:14

As the sun set on December 11, 2007, my mother lay dying in a hospital room in Abilene, Texas. We were by ourselves, her having been brought sixty miles from her small town by ambulance through what Texans call a blue norther, me driving and sliding along behind. My husband, Bud, was stuck at DFW Airport. No one else could get there, either.

Her doctors and I had decided to stop all medications because they made her sick and could do no more for the cancer that was eating her body. Being severely allergic to narcotic-based pain killers, she could take only extra-strength ibuprofen and Tylenol. Having no opiates in her system, she was lucid.

Sometime in the night, her eyes opened and she sat up on her own for the first time in days, reached out her arms, and said, He’s here! Startled out of semi-sleep, I asked, Who, Mother? Who’s here? The Lord! she said. He’s here! Praise God, he’s here. Her blue eyes shown with a soft light. She beamed as she kept reaching forward and praising God.

The hair on my arms stood on end. I could hardly breathe! Although I was strong in my faith and two years out from completing an MA in Theology—followed by developing and teaching a course on women’s spirituality at my seminary—nothing had prepared me for this. To say that I was numb and struck dumb would be an understatement.

Between periods of quiet, Mother opened her eyes and talked of what she was seeing (feeling? perceiving?). Once, she held her arms up, reached out her hands as if catching rain and said, It’s snowing. Looking out the window I saw that, indeed, it had start to snow again, and told her she was right. "It is snowing out there. No, she said, It’s snowing love. It’s God. It’s snowing love in this room. Maybe an hour later she opened her eyes. God is love. Life is God. Life is love. God is light. God is life. It’s all love. It’s all light, and life, and love." On she went until morning, when she closed into herself and God.

By that time the storm had cleared, and Bud was waiting for me at the Abilene airport. I left the hospital overwhelmed by grief mixed with what I’d been allowed to witness. I couldn’t talk about her last night for nearly a year after she died because I wasn’t sure what I’d witnessed. It was too inimical, raw, and precious. Then I told only a couple of close friends. Gaye was my spiritual partner. The other was a psychologist and strong Christian, Nancy. When I finished, she sat for a minute then said, you need to write this down. Write it down? I hardly could say the words, much less write them. It’s taken me fifteen years to get them onto paper. Fifteen years of wondering, grieving, wondering, praying, wondering, experiencing conflict about making Mother’s story public, and wondering. Then one day, it was time. Mary Kaigler’s ultimate experience of God as light, life, and love needed to be shared so other women could benefit from her journey.

Mother wasn’t extra special, no more favored by God than is anyone. She’d lived her life similar to other Christian women, holding no special secret of how to live in God so she could be filled with Spirit as she died. In her 83 years, she had bourn deep hurts and personal triumphs. She had fears and foibles. She loved to be around friends, shop, and travel (did she ever love to shop and travel!). Her wry wit could leave you in stitches. Writing was her passion. She disliked cooking but set a table like something out of Southern Living.

Over the years, as I’ve read the margin notes in her Bible, her journal entries, and the columns she wrote for the local newspaper as she moved from mid-life to old age, I’ve reflected on her life and questioned over and again: What enabled her to reach out to God from her deathbed, joyfully, unafraid, and welcoming? What prepared her to effortlessly articulate what she experienced the night before she died?

This book is an attempt to answer the questions: What role does the Holy Spirit play as we age? How do we, women of God, continue to mature in Spirit as we age into our sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond? And what does that look like?

Part I

Maturing in Spirit

Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

—Eph 4:13–15

1

The Holy Spirit

Points to Ponder

Who is the Holy Spirit?

What is the purpose of the Holy Spirit?

Before we begin, let’s talk about the nature of the Spirit. Many people confuse spirituality, religion, and faith. Although they are related and interconnected, they aren’t the same. In a nutshell, religion is a structured system of how we understand and worship God through theology and creed. Faith is our understanding that God exists, loves us, and is here for us. Spirituality has to do with the depth of our inner relationship with the Holy Spirit. It’s the lens through which we see the connection of God with ourselves and others. We can shorten this by thinking of religion as what we do, faith as what we believe, and spirituality as what drives us to live in God by patterning our life on Jesus’.

John Wesley wrote, The Holy Spirit enlightens our understanding of God, harmonizes our will and desires with God, renews our nature in God, unites us with Christ, assures our adoption as God’s children, guides our actions as God would have them, purifies and blesses our souls and bodies for the purpose of the full and eternal enjoyment of God.²

Whoa! That’s a whole lot more about the Holy Spirit than I’ve ever heard in a sermon. While we know that God does each of these, how often do we think of the Holy Spirit as the agent who provides them? Most of us don’t.

Several years back, I was visiting my parents’ church when it was announced that a well-known theologian would speak that afternoon about the Trinity. Mother and I decided to go hear him. He was a personable speaker, well-qualified to speak on the Trinity. I liked his analysis and the way he presented his material. After an hour, he ended and asked if there were questions. I raised my hand, What about the Holy Spirit? What do you mean? he responded. As the third component of the holy triune, you didn’t mention it. You talked only about God and Jesus, I replied. He didn’t respond. He said nothing! After a couple of seconds he asked if there were more questions. No, there weren’t, and that ended the discussion.

Was I surprised? Kind of. But I wasn’t blown away with his exclusion of the Holy Spirit. Most know a lot about God and Jesus, but not the details, nature, and purpose of the Spirit other than as a means to understand and relate to God. What we don’t often realize is that the Holy Spirit is a living, dynamic component of God that wants to have a relationship with us, is our intercessory to God, and works deep within us so we can live godly lives. Thus, to mature in Spirit, we’ve got to fully understand the Holy Spirit

Spirituality in the TWENTIETH and TWENTY-FIRST Centuries

In the late nineteenth century, mainline and evangelical Christian theologians began to discount the Spirit in favor of teaching religious doctrines that were based on knowledge. The notion that our relationship with God is rooted in a deep, soulful, spiritual, and emotional place in our heart was considered naïve and untrustworthy—even heretical.

A few mid-century Christian scholars tried to return Spirit back into its rightful place in our understanding of God. Theologian Paul Tillich believed the Holy Spirit was the one who made Christ alive in us. According to theologian Frederick Parrella, the Spirit is the New Being of the Christ alive in life and history.³ Yet, some thirty years later, when evangelical theologian Gordon Fee began to write an article on the Holy Spirit, he couldn’t locate any books on the subject! [While] we have (rightly) kept our central focus on Christ Jesus, we are less sure about the Holy Spirit. Despite the affirmations in our creeds and hymns and the lip service paid to the Spirit in our occasional conversations, the Spirit has been largely marginalized both in the halls of learning and in the life of the church as a community of faith.

Further into the book he wrote, One reads Paul poorly who does not recognize that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end. In conclusion, he said, If the church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and to recapture Paul’s perspective: the Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God’s own personal presence in and among us.⁴

Tillich’s and Fee’s words remain powerful, along with those of others who began to question the split between the head and the heart in the late 1900s. They point to a serious gap in our understanding of God’s nature and God’s desire to be part of our deepest being. We’re left lacking for the richness of the life God has in store for us. For it’s the Holy Spirit who allows to us to emotionally feel and experience God in our heart and bodies in ways that go beyond knowing about God (theology) and following God’s will (religiosity). This is what Jesus meant when he said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all you soul, and with all your mind (Matt 22:37).

Over the past forty years, a resurgence of interest in spirituality has risen in and among Christians. Richard Foster wrote his seminal book, The Celebration of Discipline in 1978, and revised it in 1998 and 2018. The book, which has sold well over a million copies and listed in Christianity Today’s top ten books of the twentieth century, has served as the basis for hundreds more books that discuss the merits of using various techniques—such as prayer, meditation, and journaling—to bring God closer into our daily lives.

So, too, are there a plethora of books written that describe the lives of those who have lived or are living in close communion with the Holy Spirit. Medieval mystics such as Theresa of Avila, Julien of Norwich (my favorite), Brother Lawrence, and John of the Cross fly off the shelves. More recently, writers like Henri Nouwen and Kathleen Norris have given us insight into how to live spirit-filled lives.

While such resources are beyond valuable to we who want to expand our spiritual tools and allow the Holy Spirit to become an integral part of who we are, their foci are either on learning spiritual methods or the result of living in Spirit. But they don’t, in and of themselves, help us to mature in Spirit. We can meditate for hours, read purposefully, pray in various and expanded ways, and serve in a wider capacity while reading about the spiritual giants, yet still miss the mark because we must bring the Holy Spirit into our daily lives and allow it to help us grow.

Nature of Living in Spirit

Let’s start with clarifying what the role of Spirit in our lives isn’t. It’s not intended to make us anything other than godly women—to become all that we can be in God while we live. As David Brenner writes, The spiritual journey is not intended to make us into angels, cherubim, seraphim, gods, or some other form of spiritual beings. It is intended to help us become all that we, as humans, can be.⁵ However, sometimes, after someone dies, we hear things like, God needed another angel, or, She certainly earned her wings, or, for dear sake, God needed another _______ (fill in the blank) in heaven. While we are promised many wonderful things to come after we die, becoming an angel or a member of the heavenly host isn’t one of them. And God certainly doesn’t need another _______ (fill in the blank).

What we are promised is that God’s Spirit will be with us and guide us to