The "midlife crisis" is inevitable. It is just one of the many transitions that we go through on the journey of life. If we are lucky, we may have had a good role model at home teaching us how to understand and cope with the turning points in our lives. Often we did not. Instead we had influences in our life which created negative attitudes. We may have seen role-models buckle under the pressures of life.
John 16:1-"These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble."
What were the attitudes of those around you during your childhood? Ray* had a sense of entitlement and covetousness that really seemed to pay off. To hear him tell it, he was overwhelmed with the responsibility of supporting his large family. In his mind, that justified being a welfare cheat and using his ill-gotten gains to finance real estate investments. He ended up quite well-off.
2 Peter 2:12-"But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption."
Cindy* got pregnant after a one-night stand that she had on the weekend she graduated from her Bronx, New York high school. Her family placed intense pressure on her to get an abortion. Cindy courageously refused to do this. She amazingly soldiered on as a single mother and earned a college degree. By the time I met Cindy, she was a teacher and mother in Westchester County, New York. The many years of parenting her daughter alone and trying to balance that with her teaching position, had left her burned out and depressed as she reached middle age. She was jealous of the lifestyle of her daughter Larissa's* friends. She developed the reputation of being litigious.
Isaiah 38:20-"the Lord was ready to save me; therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments all the days of our life, in the house of the Lord."
Then there was Conor*. Conor was beginning to feel all of his fifty years. He was feeling insecure seeing all the young, new talent, being hired at his company. They were faster than him, more technologically saavy and very aggressive. They seemed to have no respect for their elders, as he had, when he was their age. God had blessed Conor throughout his career, but he had lost sight of that. The only one who seemed to understand how he felt was his administrative assistant Emma*. This lead to an affair and his eventual divorce from his wife of twenty-five years.
2 Samuel 12:7b-8-"I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!"
Ray, Cindy and Conor had poor life skills. The inevitable pressures of work and family caused each of them to begin sliding unto the wrong path as they reached the middle years of their life. What is it that makes "mid-life" so treacherous? Also, what impact did this have on their children? There are a few answers that quickly come to mind. First, they were each the product of dysfunctional homes. They all seemed to neatly fall into a pit that each of their families had dug for them.
Ezekiel 18:4a-"Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine."
And, the sins that they committed, in response to their mid-life crises', in turn, dug a pit for each of their children. Ray's son ended up writing bad checks when he could no longer fund the lifestyle that he and his family had grown accustomed to. Criminal enterprises seemed to come natural to him. Cindy's daughter Larissa somehow always dated men who were emotionally unavailable to her and she's the one who is soldiering on now. Finally, what about Conor's son Aiden*?
Matthew 15:14-"Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a pit."
I was invited to Conor's son wedding this May. The beautiful bride is the daughter of a friend. I had just received the "save the date" card in the mail when I unexpectedly received a call from my friend informing me that her daughter had called off the wedding! Initially, I was shocked but upon reflection, I was able to connect this all back to the trauma of his father's betrayal of his family.
Aiden felt cast aside when his father took up with his assistant Emma. Emma took all of the time and attention away from Aiden just when all the insecurities of the teenage years meant that he needed his dad the most. Is it a coincidence that his bride-to-be cancelled the wedding when she found out that he had cheated on her? Start connecting the dots of your own life and see if you can't make some sense of it all. Remember, Jesus rescues us from the pitfalls of life. We must begin to know that what we are doing is wrong and call on the Savior to pull us out of the pit.
1 John 1:9-"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness."
Mid-life is the time when some important truths about ourselves come to light. This is a good thing, because only when the truth comes to light can we move on to positive new directions. Some of the things that we had based our life upon have not worked out. Ray had six children. He had not thought or planned for this. He wasn't one to plan and that philosophy of "don't worry be happy" had placed a hardship on his children. What's more, work wasn't for him, his father or grandfather. The truth hurts.
Cindy and her daughter were both super achievers professionally, but seemed to always pick men that were not there for them. Larissa was the long-suffering girlfriend of a millionaire Muslim man from Manhattan. She wanted so much to get married but his parents did not approve of this Jewish girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She was beautiful, smart and talented so what seemed natural about this relationship to her?
The Bible, where God teaches us how we are to live our life, will be a source of strength as we face the erupting volcano of turmoil that comes our way during mid-life. What is it with you? A troubled marriage? Out of control teenagers, a job that you hate or a growing financial crisis? Take a step back and begin to look at this with perspective. Who are you, and where are you going? Have you tried everything you know to solve it? Do you want healing, renewal, or a new direction? Jesus is the answer. With our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we can turn our life around and have a good outcome. He is only a prayer away.
Jonah 2:2-Saying,"I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice."
* the names have been changed but the stories are real.
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