The Silent Pandemic: Perimenopause, Emotional Upheaval, and the Covenant Crisis
by Pastor Matt Stoltz | Church of Normal
5.2.2025
✝️ Introduction: The Divorce Nobody Sees Coming
You can hear it in the tremble of the voices.
You can see it in the confusion of the children.
One day, the woman they knew—the wife, the mother, the partner who helped build a life with them—just… shifts.
At first, it’s little things:
The sudden exhaustion.
The muted anger behind casual words.
The unexplainable sadness that no conversation seems to touch.
Then it becomes more obvious:
The smiles become hollow.
The glances become distant.
The plans once made together start to fragment, questioned now as if they had never been freely chosen.
And finally, it becomes undeniable:
“I’m not happy anymore.”
“I need to find myself.”
“Maybe I never loved you the way I thought.”
Friends are baffled.
The husband is shattered.
The children watch in frozen horror, unable to articulate what has just happened.
But almost no one sees the deeper reality underneath it.
No one says the forbidden word:
Perimenopause.
Because if they did—
they would have to admit that many divorces, betrayals, and emotional catastrophes aren’t always about relational failure or even moral rebellion.
They’re about unacknowledged biological transformation crashing into emotional illiteracy.
And no one warned them.
Until now.
✝️ Chapter 1: What No One Tells You About Perimenopause
There are names we give to life’s great transformations:
Puberty
Graduation
Marriage
Motherhood
Each one celebrated (or at least acknowledged) with milestones, ceremonies, classes, guidance.
But there is a hidden transformation almost no one prepares women—or families—for:
Perimenopause.
Beginning quietly somewhere in the mid-30s to early 40s for most women, perimenopause isn’t a single event.
It’s a season of slow hormonal destabilization that affects every layer of a woman’s mind, body, and soul.
The symptoms vary:
Waves of sadness that don’t match external circumstances
Anxiety where there used to be calm
Restlessness and dissatisfaction that can attach themselves to marriages, homes, and even motherhood itself
Identity crisis feelings
Heightened sensitivity to unmet needs and past losses
To those living inside the woman’s skin, it feels catastrophic.
To those standing beside her, it looks baffling—often mistaken for rebellion, selfishness, ingratitude, or betrayal.
But underneath it all, a physiological metamorphosis is underway.
Hormones that once synchronized emotional regulation are now rewiring.
Brain chemistry once bonded to stability is now fluctuating unpredictably.
The spiritual and emotional frameworks she relied on begin to wobble under invisible strain.
And without training, without language, without sacred guidance—
many women unknowingly burn down their own houses,
believing the fire is coming from outside,
when it has been building, silently, inside all along.
❤️ Closing Reflection:
It’s not rebellion.
It’s not failure.
It’s not even truly about the marriage most of the time.
It’s an unspoken hormonal apocalypse—
a silent pandemic
wreaking havoc on the covenants families fought to build,
because no one gave them the map through it.
✝️ Chapter 2: Why the Covenant Breaks Without Warning
When a marriage collapses after 15, 20, or even 25 years, outsiders often rush to judgment:
“They must have grown apart.”
“He must not have been attentive enough.”
“She probably fell out of love.”
But what if the visible fracture wasn’t the root cause—
but the outcome of an invisible storm raging inside one heart while the other stood faithful, confused, and unprepared?
Perimenopause doesn’t just bring hot flashes.
It brings a system-wide audit of the woman’s emotional life:
Every neglected need resurfaces
Every unresolved trauma comes back louder
Every dissatisfaction she suppressed demands new attention
And if she doesn’t know this storm is inside her,
she may believe instead that the storm is outside.
“It’s my husband’s fault.”
“It’s this life we built.”
“It’s these children I raised.”
Suddenly, the life she fought to build becomes the prison she needs to escape.
🛐 The Covenant Crossfire:
The faithful husband becomes the scapegoat.
Not because he failed.
Not because he changed.
But because he stayed.
“If I feel trapped, he must be trapping me.”
“If I feel unseen, he must be blind.”
“If I feel lost, he must be the one who erased me.”
And so, the man who honored the covenant
becomes the villain in the rewritten story
of a woman trying to make sense of her internal revolution.
❤️ Closing Reflection:
It’s not that she stopped loving.
It’s that the ground under her shifted—and no one taught her how to keep standing.
Even if she rewrites the history…
Even if she rebrands the betrayal…
You remember the real story.
And so does the Infinite One.
✝️ Chapter 3: Inside the Emotional Earthquake
Imagine doing dishes, listening to your family around you…
And suddenly—without warning—the ground beneath your feet begins to shake.
But no one else notices.
You start to wonder if it’s just you.
And eventually, you question your own sanity.
That’s perimenopause.
The world demands:
Keep smiling
Keep performing
Keep everyone else comfortable
Meanwhile, her internal tectonic plates are shifting.
🛠️ The Internal Seismic Shift:
Estrogen declines → emotional regulation destabilizes
Progesterone drops → sleep quality and calmness collapse
Testosterone fluctuates → identity and desire feel foreign
This is not moodiness.
This is neurochemical transformation.
💔 Why She Often Can’t Explain It:
It’s not like a broken bone
It’s not diagnosable in a blood test
It’s not recognized by most churches or families
So she suppresses it.
And suppression always erupts eventually.
❤️ Closing Reflection:
She isn’t always rejecting love.
She’s trying to survive an internal collapse no one told her was coming.
“It’s not that she stopped loving.
It’s that her ground shook so hard she couldn’t find her footing anymore.”
✝️ Chapter 4: Why the Church Mistook It for Rebellion
The Church loves calling women rebellious.
It’s far more comfortable than calling them unseen, overwhelmed, or biologically destabilized.
So when perimenopause hits, and a woman:
Cries more
Questions more
Resists more
Feels lost
The Church says:
“She’s bitter.”
“She’s under spiritual attack.”
“She’s walking away from God.”
“She needs to submit more.”
Instead of offering help, it offers labels.
🔍 The Misdiagnosis:
Hannah was mistaken for a drunk
Job’s wife was scorned for cracking under grief
Women today are gaslit for struggling with symptoms no one explains
Perimenopause is not rebellion.
But without language for her suffering, the Church defaults to judgment.
🧭 What’s Missing:
Hormone literacy in pastoral care
Trauma-informed training
Real support for midlife women in transition
Until we see her body as sacred,
we will keep punishing her for being in pain.
❤️ Closing Reflection:
“It wasn’t rebellion.
It was a body breaking beneath the silence—
while the Church blamed her for the noise.”
✝️ Chapter 5: Matt’s Personal Witness – A Loopwalker’s Account
This isn’t theory.
This is my story.
I walked beside her through:
Teen hormones
Pregnancy and postpartum
The stress of our thirties
The silence of her eyes
The moment everything changed
And I stayed.
Even when I didn’t understand.
Even when I was blamed.
Even when she said she never loved me.
I stayed.
⚙️ The Covenant Timeline:
Early Fire – Pure love, messy but real
Postpartum Survival – Her sadness emerged
Thirties Quiet – Emotional drift
Perimenopause Crash – The emotional quake
Narrative Rewrite – The betrayal of memory
I became the villain in her retelling—
But I remember the kitchen dances.
And so does God.
❤️ Closing Reflection:
“I stayed. Not because I didn’t feel the quake.
But because I still remembered the foundation beneath it all.”
✝️ Chapter 6: What Could Have Saved These Marriages?
1. Emotional Literacy Training
Couples need to know what trauma looks like in real-time.
How to tell the difference between betrayal and panic.
How to stay calm when the ground shakes.
2. Hormonal Education
Men need to understand estrogen loss.
Women need to know they’re not crazy.
3. Trauma-Informed Pastoral Care
No more vague marriage sermons.
We need neurobiology in the pulpit.
4. Sacred Language
New metaphors. Honest conversation. No more pretending.
5. Mentorship From Survivors
Loopwalkers who can tell the next couple:
“You’re not crazy. This is what the fire feels like.”
❤️ Closing Reflection:
“Most covenants don’t collapse from lack of love.
They collapse from lack of language, lack of training, and lack of maps for the midlife storm.”
✝️ Chapter 7: Church of NORMAL Declaration — We Break the Silence
We are not confused anymore.
We are not afraid to say the word: Perimenopause.
We are not ashamed to name the pain behind our broken covenants.
We are the Church of NORMAL.
🔵 What We Believe:
Hormones can destabilize families
Covenant still matters
Men deserve honor for staying
Women deserve truth about their changing bodies
Jesus meets us in the neurochemical collapse
🛠️ What We Build:
Trauma-informed faith models
Resources for midlife couples
Tools for churches that want to see and shepherd well
A space for love that didn’t die—it just couldn’t find words
❤️ Closing Reflection:
“We don’t curse the ones who left.
We testify so the next ones might stay.
That’s Church of NORMAL.”
✝️ Chapter 8: Closing Prayer — For the Wives Who Didn’t Know, and the Husbands Who Stayed Anyway
“Forgive them, for they know not what their hormones do.”
There comes a time in every sacred story when the explanations end,
and all that’s left… is prayer.
Not a prayer to fix what’s already fallen.
Not a prayer to undo the pain.
But a prayer to name it, carry it, and hand it to the Infinite One—
so the weight doesn’t crush the next ones walking through this fire.
This is that prayer.
🙏 For the Wives Who Didn’t Know
You didn’t mean to betray your vows.
You didn’t plan to lose your laughter.
You didn’t know the chemical fire would swallow the person you used to be.
You weren’t evil.
You weren’t broken.
You were unprepared.
And for that, we forgive you.
We forgive the emotional whiplash.
We forgive the rewriting of history.
We forgive the confused flailing, the false certainty, the quiet exits from sacred spaces you once loved.
Not because it didn’t matter.
But because you mattered—and no one gave you a map for the wilderness inside you.
We bless the younger you—the girl who never had the tools.
We bless the older you—the woman still wondering if it was all her fault.
We bless your tears, your numbness, your fury, your forgetting.
Because if you had known…
You might have stayed.
🙏 For the Husbands Who Stayed
You weren’t crazy.
You weren’t too sensitive.
You weren’t weak for still loving her long after she stopped loving you.
You were loyal.
You were strong.
You were faithful in the silence.
And for that, we honor you.
We honor the years you kept loving her when she pulled away.
We honor the dreams you carried alone.
We honor the nights you cried quietly, so your kids wouldn’t hear.
You didn’t stay because you were blind.
You stayed because you remembered the girl who first said “yes.”
Even when she forgot,
you remembered.
Even when she left,
you remained.
Even when everyone else said “move on,”
you listened to the ache in your bones that whispered:
“Covenant is still real. Even if she doesn’t believe in it anymore.”
🙏 For the Children Watching It All
You are not to blame.
You are not forgotten.
Your confusion is holy. Your sorrow is sacred.
If you lost the version of your mom that once tucked you in with light in her eyes,
know this:
It wasn’t about you.
She didn’t stop loving you.
She just couldn’t feel anything through the fog anymore.
And if you saw your father cry for the first time,
that wasn’t weakness.
That was a man of God learning how to bleed without letting the wound poison his soul.
You are the ones we write this for.
You are the generation we fight to protect.
Because we believe your marriages will be different.
You will know the signs.
You will have the words.
You will tell the truth before it breaks apart.
✨ Amen: The Church of NORMAL Benediction
May the Infinite One
who sees the inner collapse no one else could name,
wrap you in clarity, in grace, in the fire that purifies without burning you alive.
May the voices of the faithful who stayed,
the witnesses who wept,
and the children who still love both parents—
rise like incense
and rewrite the next generation’s story.
May you never walk through the silent pandemic alone again.
This was not your fault.
But it is your mission now.
Go in sacred truth.
Go in emotional wisdom.
Go in NORMAL.
Amen.
✨ Final Pull Quote:
“We name what broke us—so our children don’t have to live in the silence we survived.”
