Why do midlife crises occur? We see them so frequently that they almost seem like the norm these days. Yet for those caught in the middle, the fragility of what we call our routine lives becomes painfully obvious. And many people get hurt ... first of all the one in "crisis" gets hurt again [note that he or she was already feeling his/her pain in one way or another as the antecedent to the crisis] but not only he/she is affected. The spouse typically bears the brunt of the collateral damage as do the children. But not only that, friends and other families also typically get hurt and then everyone wonders, "how did this happen? He seemed so normal or so happy." Or the disdainful, "What was she thinking?" And then everyone rushes in and tries to pick up the pieces.
I just learned of one of my dearest friend's husband's midlife crisis this past week. His dream of one day owning the family business, where he had been working for more than 15 years already, was snatched from him shortly after the beginning of the Great Recession. His father closed the business due to a paucity of sales and the bleak economic forecast ... which hasn't improved over the past three years ... and that was basically that. So he was almost 40 years old and it was now time to try to find a new future. Rather than admit this to his wife [my friend], and I am assuming feel like a failure, he kept it to himself for over a year. And he spiraled into cocaine dependency and simultaneously wiped out his family's savings including his IRA. My friend was devastated to learn of all that had transpired once she realized all their savings was gone. Sadly, something inside her died that day. She still cannot believe that this was the same man she married so many years ago.
From my observations of the lives others [and I've seen thousands of lives in my practice, church and in my friends and acquaintances] as well from my own personal struggles over the years as well as from my readings over the past twenty years I have learned a few things about mid-life. Two things are true of every middle-aged person. First, we are aware that our lives have not worked out according to our plans. We could not have written our own stories. Our lives have taken twists and turns that we could never have imagined. Some of these turns have left us both amazed and grateful while others have caused profound pain and loss.
Paul Tripp notes that "Life never works according to our plan because our individual stories are all a part of a greater story. The central character of the STORY is sovereign over each detail of our stories. So we will always live with the recognition that there are twists and turns that were never part of our plan for our lives."
There is also a second thing that is true of every middle-aged person. We are always trying to figure our lives out. Now this begins long before we reach middle age. Heck, it begins early in our childhood and continues right up to our deathbed. We are our own private investigators piecing through the details of our existence almost every day ... sometimes even every hour. Sometimes we are functionally archeologists, sifting through the ruins of our past and at other times we are more like Sherlock Holmes combing through the present situation looking for the one clue that will make it all make sense. Sometimes we are philosophers and theologians and at other times more like physicians reviewing all the symptoms trying to reach a diagnosis. Other times we are like historians trying to piece together the past to explain the present. And yet, so often this all takes place almost subconsciously without our being consciously aware of it.
These two points ... that our lives never work out according to our plans and that we are always trying to figure out our lives ... effectively define and explain the "crisis" of midlife. Paul Tripp takes this concept further when he states, "The disorientation of midlife is the result of the collision of a powerful personal awareness and a powerful personal interpretation." Now, this should not surprise us, because we do not live by the facts of our experiences, but by the ways that our interpretations have shaped those facts for us. Whatever trouble midlife brings to us is essentially caused by the fallacious thinking that we bring to it. Suddenly we become aware of things about ourselves that have been developing for years yet went by unnoticed. We don't respond to this new awareness based on the facts of our age or place in life but based on the meanings that we attach to them. And it is these meanings that will form and determine just how we will respond to midlife.
To be continued ...
