This Wasn’t In the Brochure
Like every aspect of aging so far, it came sooner than I thought it should. I had accepted the changes of my post-partum body and moved on. I had a handle on when PMS would come and what it would mean. I could plan and manage. Then, in my early forties, everything started changing. Again.
The first thing I noticed was the headaches. I have had headaches since before I had the vocabulary to describe them. But wow. Suddenly I was down for the count once a month. Except that it got harder to predict exactly when that “once a month” was going to be. It felt like the emotional minefield of puberty—but this time, I had a job and a family to manage.
What Exactly Is Perimenopause (and Why Does It Feel So Wild)?
Menopause is the time of life when a woman stops having monthly periods (and as a result, no longer ovulates). “Peri” is a prefix that means “around or near.” So perimenopause is the time “around or near” menopause. More specifically, it’s the season leading up to menopause.
If menopause is the time where your ovaries hang up their final “Closed for Business” sign, perimenopause is the going-out-of-business sale. If you’ve ever shopped at a going-out-of-business sale, you know how that works. In the initial days of the sale, prices aren’t that much lower. Inventory is pretty similar to what it was when the store was thriving. But as the sale drags on, inventory gets sparse. The staff is no longer as interested in customer service. Prices are slashed. They run out of the pretty gift wrap. The store limps along the best it can until the final day when the doors close.
When Perimenopause Disorients Your Body and Emotions
With perimenopause, women’s ovarian hormone levels begin to fluctuate. Because God designed our bodies to stay in balance, the pituitary glands try to compensate by amping up other hormones like follicle stimulating hormones. Cycles might still feel the same, but women are less likely to ovulate. But many women begin to notice things are “off.”1 The hormonal shifts start to become a bit more dramatic. PMS symptoms might become more pronounced. Cycles might become more irregular. Hot flashes and night sweats might begin. There is a theory that your nervous system’s response to neurotransmitters changes.2 But even if we don’t know exactly why these things affect our moods and emotions, women know things just aren’t the same.
This is disorienting. For me, I felt like I was just starting to figure out how to best manage my moods and emotions with PMS, and things changed yet again. The headaches disrupted my life significantly. It’s a lot to deal with. Add to that the already demanding schedules most women are trying to juggle.
It’s like being given new software with no manual, and having to navigate it solo on a deadline. Our lives don’t slow down for perimenopause, so we have to keep pushing through in a body that doesn’t seem to be cooperating.
Perimenopause and the Theology of Aging
Our bodies were created by God, and they are good. But yet, the fall affects us in both body and soul. The spiritual separation from God occurred when Adam and Eve sinned, and it also introduced the specter of death. The physical death of Adam and Eve didn’t happen immediately, but the process began. Aging in general, and perimenopause specifically, is part of that slow descent that all of us, if we live long enough, will experience.
We work very hard to make ourselves feel better about aging. This is a worthy goal, but we tend to go about it the wrong way. Since aging is a reminder of death, and death is the result of the fall, it is not something we were created for. Death is not “just a part of life,” death is the enemy. The unsettled feeling that aging brings is therefore a logical response. Something doesn’t feel right because, quite frankly, it isn’t.
But that doesn’t mean all is lost. God redeems aging like he does everything else. Bible verses remind us that even though our physical bodies are dying, we are still spiritually growing (2 Corinthians 4:16). We are growing in wisdom, which is very valuable (even though the world doesn’t see it that way).
I think that dissonance is why perimenopause is so unsettling. We may be wiser, but our emotional volatility doesn’t make us feel wiser. We know we are supposed to be pouring into others, but how is that possible when we feel so out of sorts?
Why Emotions During Perimenopause Still Point to Truth
We work very hard in the church to tell ourselves (and others) that our feelings are not facts. I am sure there is a blog post somewhere where I have said that myself. But our feelings are what connects our physical bodies to our internal world. Yes, they are fallen, like the rest of our bodies, and they are usually out of proportion with what is really going on. But our feelings are pointing to a very true reality: things aren’t the way they should be.
It’s hard to sugar coat this, and I am not sure that we do the world any favors when we do. But aging is inevitable, and we need to embrace it. The secular world tries to reframe this as another “natural” phase of life, or they try to “life hack” their way back to youth.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up my eye cream. But the only true solution to the problems of our fallen world is the gospel message. Perimenopause brings hormonal instability that harshly reminds us the world is broken and death is inevitable. Meanwhile, the world is desperately waiting to hear our message of hope.
The Church and the Silent Season
It’s easy to celebrate transitions related to newness. We celebrate new starts like graduations, new families formed in wedding ceremonies, and new life in the birth of babies. There isn’t much that happens in perimenopause that lends itself naturally to a celebration. I am all for “Hot Flash Sunday,” but church sanctuaries are typically chilly enough already.
Perimenopause is the “messy middle” in every sense of the word. Most women in perimenopause are not in the quiet of the empty nest. Those with children are in the marathon season of parenting teenagers and launching young adults into the real world. They may still even be parenting toddlers. Those in the workforce are often in the thick of their careers. Many also serve as the primary caregivers for aging relatives—often from a distance.
But persevering in a body that often feels like it’s working against you is something to celebrate. Surrendering in prayer when your schedule feels untenable is storing up treasure, even if we aren’t printing Hallmark cards about it. These things may be unseen, but they are not insignificant.
The Difference Between Persevering and Pushing Through
The challenges of perimenopause confront us with the truth: we are made of dust (Psalm 103:14). And while we are called to persevere, many of us mistake that for pushing through. We give lip service to the fact that we are mere mortals, but our actions betray a different mindset.
Most of us could push through on nothing but coffee and adrenaline when we were 25, even though we should have known better. We can’t do it now, and the consequences are pretty awful when we try. If we weren’t doing it already, perimenopause is the season when we have to accept that our bodies need and deserve our care.
I suppose I should offer a list at this point, but I don’t want this to be the hormone equivalent of James 2:16. How do I tell the woman with a jam-packed schedule to rest? How do I tell the woman with insomnia to sleep? How do I tell the woman on a tight budget with no time to shop to eat healthy? How do I tell the woman with no childcare to go exercise?
And therein lies the rub. That is the heart of the struggle. We probably all already know those things. We are older and wiser, after all. And just like it’s easy to budget other people’s money, it’s also easy to manage other people’s time. Why should I give you a list? You already know what is on it.
How to Anchor Yourself in God’s Truth During Hormonal Upheaval
But Christ gave us the sacrament of the Lord’s supper to remind us of his death for our sins because we are a forgetful people. Since the world is screaming that aging is natural or that we need to hack our way to eternal youth, I can remind you of the facts as Scripture lays them out for us.
The World, and Our Bodies, Are Broken
The reason why you feel out of sync is because you are. There are physical things that can be done to ease it (okay, I’ll give the list: exercise, nutrition, adequate sleep). You may need to see your doctor for other interventions. That is the reality of the fall. But just as we won’t be fully redeemed spiritually until Jesus comes again, we won’t be physically redeemed until then, either. That doesn’t necessarily require you to become a martyr to your pain, nor is it more spiritual to not seek medical help (please seek help if you need it). But we cannot fully undo the effects of the fall on this side of heaven. We can’t offer the world the good news until we accept the bad news. And we have to do that in our own hearts first.
You Have a Valuable Place in God’s Church and in His Work
Despite the marketing materials that show churches full of thin, gorgeous families, it is clear all through Scripture that God uses the ordinary and average to take his message to the world. When you believe your mess disqualifies you, God steps in and pours out His grace.
Who is better to remind us that the world is broken than a woman whose body who breaks out in a sweat when it’s 60 degrees? Who better to remind us of our imperfection than the woman persevering through fatigue and brain fog? I can’t say what ministry will look like for you. I am not living inside your body. I am not navigating your life’s demands. But the physical limits perimenopause has put on you gives you all the more reason to point to the perfection and the glory of Christ, which is where the focus needs to be anyway.
You Are Growing in Wisdom, Even if You Don’t Feel Like It
The common thread I hear when women speak about perimenopause is the disruption. It comes at the most inconvenient of times, and makes us feel like we need to relearn life just as we were starting to figure it out.
This reality should drive us right back to our knees in prayer. We have to admit we can’t fake it. We have to accept that we are mortal. This is what is forging the inner beauty and the gentle and quiet spirit Scripture reminds us of (1 Peter 3:4). You may not be handling perimenopause as well as you think you should, but you’re handling it better now than you would have at 21. You may not feel like there will be fruit for this, but there will be. God doesn’t waste our adversity.
Your life looks different than mine. You have your struggles and your challenges. You face demands that I might not even be able to imagine. But we have the same God. He offers the same promises to all of us who seek him. Our bodies are groaning for that final redemption, and perimenopause is an inescapable reminder of that inevitable fact. We need not retreat in shame over this, because we have the only true solution, and it is the solution the world needs us to share.
Prefer to watch? I made a video covering these same points:
This is part of my series on the Theology of Hormones. Read my cornerstone post here.
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- Melmed, S., Auchus, R. J., Goldfine, A. B., Rosen, C. J., & Kopp, P. A. (Eds.). (2025). Williams textbook of endocrinology (15th ed.). Elsevier, pp 62 ↩︎
- Tiziana Fidecicchi, Andrea Giannini, Peter Chedraui, Stefano Luisi, Christian Battipaglia, Andrea R. Genazzani, Alessandro D. Genazzani, Tommaso Simoncini,
Neuroendocrine mechanisms of mood disorders during menopause transition: A narrative review and future perspectives, Maturitas, Volume 188, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.maturitas.2024.108087. ↩︎
Thank you. You speak right to the heart.
Thanks, Michelle.