When I curl up to read a book, it is my personal quiet time…a turning within. What’s that saying…”a book is a gift you can open again and again.” That is so true! I hope you enjoy my thoughts and book review of Second Calling by Dale Hanson Bourke.
I strongly recommend this book for women approaching or in their midlife years. It helped me take a new fresh look at myself thought my eyes of wisdom, compassion and love. For the most part, the anticipation and excitement of the second half of life was something I had looked forward to. However, life as wonderful as it is, can throw us curve balls when we least expect it. That was my case as I was adjusting to both empty nesting and concurrently losing my dad who was a really huge part of my life.
This book came to me at a very transitional time of my life. I became an empty nester at the age of 42, (big time of change for mommas!!) then 4 months later my dad passed away. I had been really involved in his traumatic brain injury recovery and bone marrow cancer journey. We had spent so many days together as he recovered from the TBI. In October of 2013, my life was changing and changing at a rapid pace. I honestly felt like I was on a roller coaster ride on any given day of the week during that time as I was adjusting to empty nest with my son away at college and losing my dad all within a few months of each other. A friend gave me this book a week after my dad passed. It took eight months before I read the entire book. I wept when I read what my friend Vicki wrote inside the book because it was exactly what I needed to hear. She wrote, “Kristi, May God reveal your second calling.” With so many changes going on for me right then, I found this book to be comforting and encouraging on so many levels. Today at 49, I still flip through this book again and again and always find more pearls of wisdom that still jump from the page.
RELATED: Part 2: Staying Steady in the Storm
Each of our situations is different as we go through midlife. Regardless, this transitional time of life can have so many things rolled up into it. I find it a time of letting go but also a time of many new beginnings and new opportunities. Second Calling delves into the second season of a woman’s life and the changing roles we serve in. If you are a woman feeling empty, lost or confused in the second stage of your life, or maybe experiencing a major change in the roles you have functioned in thus far in your life, reading her book should be on your to do list. The book discusses how God has so much more planned for us in the second half of our life. All these years, God has been preparing us for what is yet to come in our journey. A quote from the book that has always stuck with me, “But eventually He wants us to move on, confident that what He is calling us to will be so much more than what He is calling us from.” I always remind myself that in times of change.
I encourage you to embrace this second season of life, our second calling, with excitement and anticipation of what is yet to come. I believe the second stage of life is a time God wants to do more through us than ever before.
Happy Reading my friend!
