Second Calling:
Finding Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life

by Dale Hanson Bourke

Book review by Janice Byrd

Second Calling: Finding Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life is a book for grown-up women who want to make their lives count for something bigger than themselves. Author Dale Hanson Bourke tells us in the first chapter, “God has been patiently waiting while we fitted Him in around all the other aspects of our lives, raised our children, and built a professional resume.”

In this Age of so many female American octogenarians, God is calling an unprecedented number of healthy, wealthy, and educated women in the second half of their lives to “build spiritual muscle, to develop a resume of soul work, and to join Him on an unimaginable adventure.”

But, being faithful to God’s new calling often means giving up some of our identities from the past, and looking at our “idols of the heart,” Think about what you worry about most, what you couldn’t live without. Is it the approval of others? Being needed? Your physical attractiveness?

Bourke encourages us to get over getting older, to pull away from those voices calling us to stay attached to our youth. Secondly, she challenges us to release the insults, betrayals, injustices, and criticisms of the past. Second Calling deals with “self-care,” what it is, and what it is not.

Naomi from the Old Testament book of Ruth is the archetypal second-half-of-life woman, and her story is woven into every chapter of this book. Like middle-aged women today, Naomi could never have imagined how God was going use her, her past experiences, her faithfulness, and her willingness to become someone new.

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