PROFILE May 22, 1989 Issue

Too old for employment?

Constance Benac

Age doesn't have to consign us to the sidelines—in contributing, accomplishing, learning, giving. As the following account helps to illustrate, gaining an understanding of God, who is unending Life and Love, and learning to put Him first in our affections, have significant bearing on all the ways we live and love and work. Constance Benac, a mother and grandmother, former journalist, and longtime student of Christian Science, shares a particularly meaningful employment experience.

On the day I faced a divorce and loss of my home, I had been retired from my career for a year, and we were living way up in a mountain town. I was sixty years old.

At first I felt a crushing sense of humiliation. Then anger. I thought I had been a good wife; that I'd done everything. I'd been working in church and teaching Sunday School and studying the Bible Lesson^{ Found in the Christian Science Quarterly .} every day. I felt I didn't deserve this unjust climax. I was also worried because I didn't have any money of my own, our twelve-year old son and I didn't have any place to go, and I didn't see how in the world I could get back into the marketplace.