I am still a work in progress.
By Jennifer Greene-Sullivan
I didn’t expect perimenopause to arrive like a whirlwind—loud, intrusive, exhausting, and strangely identity-shaking. Since October, that’s exactly how it has felt. Sleepless, sweaty nights followed by long days of trying to function with barely five hours of rest have become my new routine. I’m tired in a way that feels bone-deep. I’m impatient in ways I don’t recognize. Honestly, I’m not sure who this woman with wildly shifting estrogen levels even is.
Before all of this, I believed I was patient. Kind. Loving. Now I feel rough around the edges, like sandpaper scraping everything I love without meaning to be abrasive. What’s the hardest part? Trying to live and work alongside my husband while navigating these hormonal storms.
Chris and I are opposites in communication. I am a communicator—words, ideas, emotions, prayers, swirling thoughts filling every corner of my mind. Meanwhile, it’s as if Chris ran out of things to say sometime in 2017. He speaks to men, but rarely converses with me. He doesn’t like to chat. The silence, combined with my emotional highs and lows, has made our home feel like the USS PERI—captained by a woman who didn’t sign up for the voyage and a husband who doesn’t speak the maritime language.
I’ve tried to be quiet these last several weeks, not wanting to sound harsh or be labeled as having an “attitude”—a word Chris uses for almost anything I say that doesn’t land the way he prefers. And each time he says it, I shrink a little. I hate the feeling of being told not to talk at all. I hate feeling unseen. I feel trapped. I feel mismatched. I feel worn down.
However, in all this turmoil, one truth has become painfully clear:
I cannot do this in my own strength.
Not perimenopause.
Not communication gaps.
Not marriage tensions.
Not even being patient, or “nice,” or understanding.
Under my own strength, I fail. And in a strange way, admitting that has freed me.
For the last few months, the Lord has kept me firmly in the Sermon on the Mount—specifically the idea of being poor in spirit. I’ve studied it. Prayed it. Tried to understand it.
But only lately have I realized:
I truly am poor in spirit. I have no ability to make it on my own. Not in this season. Not in any season.
Yet…
I hadn’t applied that truth to my own marriage.
A mutual friend once joked that if Chris and I ever had problems, he would learn about it because I’d post it on Facebook. But strangely, this is the one thing I haven’t been able to write about, and any attempt comes out as sad, senseless chicken scratch. So instead, I’ve cried out privately:
“Lord, I can’t do this. I don’t know what’s happening to me or to my relationship.”
And then came a breakthrough—unexpected, gentle, holy.
Last night, in the book of Hosea (because God loves a little irony), I read the verse:
“I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” — Hosea 6:6
It echoed Jesus’ own words from the Sermon on the Mount.
It struck hard.
Hosea was describing a relationship with God built on steadfast love, compassion, and mercy—not performance, not perfection, not self-sufficiency.
So I asked the Lord, “What are You telling me here?”
And His answer was so simple I nearly missed it:
“Be merciful because I have been so merciful to you.”
I wrote it in my journal over and over like a whisper becoming a command:
BE MERCIFUL.
BE MERCIFUL.
BE MERCIFUL.
I went to bed determined to embody that mercy.
But today… I failed.
At lunch, Chris withheld important information about our life and business—something I needed to know as his wife and partner. I felt the sting immediately: unimportant, overlooked, unseen. And in that hurt, I lashed out.
Another Jennifer-on-a-rant moment.
Another moment where mercy slipped from my grasp.
Yet, here’s the beautiful part of mercy:
It doesn’t evaporate when you fail to give it.
It waits.
It remains.
It is renewed each time you return to the Father.
So again, I confessed to Jesus.
Again, He was faithful to forgive.
Just minutes later, as Chris and I drove away, I received a text from an unknown number inviting me to dinner—clearly not meant for me. Instead of ignoring it, I responded, and somehow, Jenny from LA and I struck up a two-hour conversation. She’s 38, longing for a family, longing for stability. I found myself sharing my testimony—how God answered my prayers in 2016, giving me both a husband and a son. How He restored what felt impossible. How He redeemed my story.
There I was, moments after feeling defeated and angry, suddenly thanking God for the very man I had been frustrated with minutes earlier. I was sharing the goodness of God to a stranger from Singapore who now lives in LA.
That’s mercy.
That’s grace.
That’s God interrupting my spirals with truth.
At the end of the day, this is the cry of my heart:
I want to love like He loves.
I want to be merciful as He is merciful.
I want to forgive quickly, hold gently, speak kindly, and trust fully.
Hope—qavah—is my expectation for God Himself.
Not for my hormones.
Not for my circumstances.
Not even for my marriage.
But for Him.
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in His word I put my hope.”
—Psalm 130: 5-7
And as long as He is my hope, He will redeem every part of my story—my body, my mind, my marriage, and the woman I’m becoming in this new season.
Scripture References
1. On Being Poor in Spirit
Matthew 5:3
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
2. On Mercy
Hosea 6:6
“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Matthew 5:7
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
3. On God as the Rock
Psalm 18:2
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer…”
Psalm 61:2
“Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
4. On Waiting, Hoping, and Holding Fast
Psalm 130:5–7
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits… put your hope in the Lord…”
5. On God’s Strength in Our Weakness
2 Corinthians 12:9
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
6. On Emotional Storms & God’s Peace
Isaiah 26:3–4
“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast… Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord… is the Rock eternal.”
7. On Marriage, Patience, and Love
Ephesians 4:2–3
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
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The Aging English Major 