There is a way of telling somebody they are too old that never once uses the word, and it is very carefully constructed.
Picture the woman it was said to. She is fifty seven. She has done that work for twenty two years and knows more about it than anybody on the panel.
The feedback was warm. It said that the other candidate had brought real energy to the interview, and that the panel had been looking for somebody who could bring fresh momentum to the team, and that of course her experience is invaluable and they very much hope she will continue to support the new arrangement.
Every one of those sentences is deniable. Not one of them is about age. If she raised it, she would be told, sincerely, that age had nothing to do with it, and the person saying that would believe it.
And she knows. She knows the way anybody knows a thing that was said to them without being said.
That is the specific trap of it, and it is worth naming. She has been given a reason she cannot argue with, and she has also been given nothing she could ever point at, and those two together produce a very particular kind of silence.
She cannot complain, because there is nothing to complain about. She cannot let it go, because she was not actually told anything. So it sits.
And the word that keeps coming back to her, at odd moments, is energy. She has found herself, twice now, being slightly more animated in meetings than is natural to her, and she caught herself doing it the second time and was ashamed.
That is the injury. Not the role. That a fifty seven year old woman with twenty two years of expertise has started performing vigor in a meeting room.
The word in the psalm is still
There is a line in the psalms about later life that has one word in it doing all the work, and almost everybody reads past it.
They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. (Psalm 92:14, King James Version)
Still.
Not again. Not one day. Not after a difficult period. Still, which means continuing, which means the thing was never interrupted in the first place.
And the image before it in that psalm is a tree planted in the house of the LORD, which is a slow image on purpose. Trees do not bring energy to anything. They bring depth, and shade, and fruit, and they do it by having been there a long time.
You are described as still bringing forth fruit, and Psalm 92 uses the word still rather than the word again (Psalm 92:14), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an agricultural image land in a room where somebody has been asked for momentum.
And notice what the psalm does not offer. It does not promise she gets the role. It says something about what she is, which is a different and sturdier thing.
You have been given a description rather than a prediction, and Psalm 92:14 says what a person is rather than what will happen to them (Psalm 92:14), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a description enough on a Tuesday.
With the ancient is wisdom
There is a line in Job that is used badly by people defending themselves and is worth reading in its actual context.
With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding. (Job 12:12)
Job is being lectured at by younger men who have a great deal of confidence and very little idea, and he says that sentence somewhat drily.
But the sentence is true, and it is in the book, and what it names is a specific asset that cannot be produced by any amount of vigor. Length of days is not a substitute for competence. It is a category of competence that only exists after a long time.
You have an asset that is only available at this end of a working life, and Job 12 names length of days as the source of a particular kind of understanding (Job 12:12), and it is the Holy Spirit who lets a woman value a thing that a panel did not know how to score.
And there is a line in Proverbs about age that is startlingly direct.
The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. (Proverbs 16:31)
A crown. That is not a consolation prize for people who did not get a role, and it is not a suggestion that older people are sweet. It is a description of standing.
You are wearing something the passage calls a crown, and Proverbs 16 attaches it to years lived in a certain way (Proverbs 16:31), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a present fact rather than a compliment about the past.
What this is not
Let me be plain, because this could become bitter very easily.
This is not saying the panel were liars. Some of them may have been genuinely unaware of what they were doing. Bias mostly does not feel like bias from the inside.
It is also not telling her to raise it or to take advice about her options. That is a decision only she can make, with her own knowledge of that building and what it would cost, and this article has none of that.
And it is not promising the next one. Nobody can promise that.
And plainly: if this has begun to reach into how you see your whole life, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you has begun wanting it all to stop, that is bigger than a hiring decision. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Asking at fifty seven is not a defeat.
You are not being handed a grievance to carry, and Psalm 92 offers a description of what somebody is rather than a case against anybody (Psalm 92:14), and the Holy Spirit is the one who can hold an accurate reading of a room without turning it into bitterness.
So here is the turn, and it does not require anybody to admit anything.
You are still bringing forth fruit, and Psalm 92:14 uses still rather than again about people at exactly this stage (Psalm 92:14), and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an image of a slow tree and stands it up in a meeting room where somebody was asked for momentum.
Now the counterfeit, and after feedback like that it does not sound cruel, it sounds like realism. It says: they are right, your time has passed, and pretending otherwise is undignified. Look at the shape of that. It names the person rather than a thing, it opens no door, and its only instruction is to accept a verdict nobody was willing to say out loud. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and always opens a door in the same breath.
You have not been correctly assessed by a word chosen to be deniable, and Proverbs 16:31 calls the gray head a crown rather than an obstacle (Proverbs 16:31), and that work belongs to the Spirit of God, who has been present for all twenty two of those years and can name what each one produced.
Nothing here promises a role. What is settled is that the fruit is described as still rather than again, that length of days produces a competence nothing else produces, and that a woman does not have to perform vigor in a room in order to be worth something in it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the kitchen with your hands in something. You are in Christ, and that is what makes the authority to speak over your own years delegated rather than invented. God says the fruit in old age is still coming, so speak to the word that got used about you, and then leave the outcome to Him.
- Word energy that got used about me, you are one of a set of careful words and I heard exactly what they meant. The Word of God says they shall still bring forth fruit in old age, and still is the word it uses.
- Instruction to perform vigor in a meeting, you are refused in the name of Jesus. Proverbs 16 calls the hoary head a crown of glory, and I am not going to act younger to be worth something in a room.
- Father, Job 12 says with the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding. I name out loud what these years actually produced, and I thank You that Your Spirit has been with me for every one of the twenty two.
Psalm 92:14
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