Mindy Nolt reflects on how difficult it can be to find time and space to rest and regain her energy, especially as a Christian woman who has experienced the pressures that the Christian patriarchy has placed on her.
This blog is in preparation for the 2025 Mennonite Church USA convention, Follow Jesus ’25, and the Women’s Summit that precedes convention.
Mindy Nolt is a chaplain at Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital and has a Master of Divinity from Lancaster Theological Seminary. She attends Blossom Hill Mennonite Church, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she was previously an associate pastor. She lives with her husband, Jared Hankee, and their 3 children, in Lancaster, the ancestral land of the Susquehannock and Lenni-Lenape Indigenous Peoples. Mindy is a singer-songwriter and is delighted that hardly a day goes by in which someone is not singing, playing an instrument or making up a song in their home. She is currently assisting the MC USA Women in Leadership Steering committee in logistics planning for the Women’s Summit.
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Recently, I went to the local YMCA to get in a short swim and relax in the sauna. I was at the gym for a total of 45 minutes. During that time, three older men started up a conversation with me — one in the pool, one just after I got out of the pool and one in the sauna. The conversations were not unpleasant. They started with the men asking a question — “What are you training for?” “What’s your tattoo?” “How long do you stay in the sauna?” It became clear, however, that their questions for me were a springboard for them to tell me about themselves — what they were training for, the story behind their tattoo, their sauna routine. I was kind to them. I was also careful not to engage much, to protect the time I had set aside for myself.
As I get older, I have an increasing desire to be left alone. I occasionally slip away to a space in my house to rest or work on something, hoping that no one finds me with a question or a need. Some days it feels easier to make plans to do something alone than to make an arrangement with someone else. While the COVID-19 lockdown certainly had an effect on the social bandwidth many of us have, I am aware there is something else at play here.
For all my adult life, and even on some level as a child and teen, I have been taking care of people. At a relatively young age, I gathered that my role, as both a Mennonite and a female, was to put others’ needs first — a belief that was fortified by biblical interpretations and practices in my community. Even as I began to see how steeped in patriarchy those teachings and practices were, I continued to lose myself everyone else’s needs.
Because patriarchy has placed a wildly disproportionate amount of human care on the shoulders of women, I believe women are at risk of getting their energy siphoned off in almost any space — public or private.
This happens to women at the gym, the supermarket, the sidewalk, the home and the church. Sometimes we want to be left alone, to be ourselves, to do our work and to be advised by the mentors we choose. We want and need both space and airtime, without having to expend our energy to protect it or to claim it.
During seminary I served as an intern at a church. Not long into my time there, I received a lengthy email from a congregant and former pastor offering me advice on my role. I already had a supervisor whom I respected. Reading that email claimed time and energy, when what I needed from the congregants was encouragement and freedom to grow. Unfortunately, women too often must protect the space around them from some men who literally lean and step into women’s spaces until they — the men — are seen, heard and affirmed.
I will forever be seeking the balance between allowing my open, empathic heart to draw people in to tell me their stuff and allowing myself to step away, emotionally or physically, so that my open, feeling heart can be completely free, untethered and unavailable to others for a time. No one specifically told me that the latter is unacceptable. Similarly, no one ever taught my child-self that protecting my space, time and feelings is more than just acceptable — it’s vital to my flourishing. Thankfully, I had a sense of that as a child, and later, I found folks who helped me to name that freedom, affirm it, claim it, practice it and celebrate it.
Participating in the Mennonite Church USA Women’s Summit will be like like going away to our rooms or to the woods to recharge. It’s a place to step away from unsolicited advice and perhaps find mentors we didn’t know we needed. It’s a time and place where we can rest as our full selves and move about freely with others who express curiosity, not only for the benefit of telling their own stories, but to hear others’ stories, too.
MC USA Women’s Summit 2025: Beholding it Together
A Sacred Space to Rest, Reclaim and Resist
The MC USA Women’s Summit 2025 is more than just a gathering—it’s a movement toward reclaiming time, breaking cycles, and finding our power in the presence of one another. With the theme “Beholding it Together,” this one-day summit offers women in MC USA a space to pause, reflect, and be affirmed in their callings, ministries and faith journeys.
The Women’s Summit will be held directly before the Follow Jesus ’25 convention, July 8, at the Koury Convention Center, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Register here.
Support Mennonite Church USA’s Peace and Justice Initiatives by giving here.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author and are not intended to represent the views of the MC USA Executive Board or staff.