If This is Midlife

Existential reflections on turning 36

“One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.” -Carl Jung

I’ve been thirteen going on thirty since I was 9 or 10 years old. Even then, I desired to be taken seriously. I can remember beginning to be told at that age that I was wiser than my years.

The wise old women at church and my pastor always told me: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, life, love, faith, and purity.”

I can’t remember a time when that wasn’t what I set out to do.

Since I was 14 years old, I’ve been preparing for ministry, working for a paycheck, and supporting those whose needs weren’t taken care of as well as my own.

By 23, I was a married, responsible, business-owning woman, and a debt-free, home-owning therapist by the age of 24.

By the time I was 26, I was counseling and speaking under the name of my second business in town.

By 26, I was also pregnant, having tried to become so for almost a year. But the time between the knowledge of our new life, and its death, would be quick. The subsequent hoping, trying, waiting, the choices, the prayers that reshaped our desires, and the years my husband and I now call a decade would feel sad and slow, long and laborious, and then, like anything else in life, fast and fleeting.

When I turn 33 years old, I will share my existential crises with my 72-year-old spiritual director. With poignant humor and wise woman knowing, she will look at me with kind eyes and ask, “Kensi, were you ever a child?”

Second Half of Life Learning

Tomorrow is my 36th birthday, confirming the psychological turn I’ve been making for years now into midlife.

I can no longer deny the effects of aging on my face, fitness, or form. I have smile lines, laugh lines, cry lines. Instead of blonde, my hair is slowly turning silvery-gray. I don’t have stretch marks, but I do have scars.

I’ve known love, a steadfast love, that warms my heart, calms my soul, and comforts my body like a down blanket. Or, like my husband, my oldest friend.

I’ve known joy, abundant joy, that has increased, paradoxically, with my capacity for sorrow—and my capacity for sorrow is deep.

I’ve known peace, unworldly peace, that has grounded me in proportion to time spent in and aware of God’s presence.

When I was in seminary in my early twenties, I read Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.¹ The book is a roadmap to the journey that awaits anyone wanting to mature beyond “first half of life” tasks, like identity formation and ego building. At some point, once we’ve done the necessary earlier work, life will ask us to confront our human limitations, earlier failings, and flaws. We will come face to face with precisely that which we do not want and cannot (any longer live under the illusion of) control—and this will be for our formation and journey deeper into life with Christ. That is, if we let these encounters shape us as such.

Back then, I could not yet relate to second half of life tasks, much less a second half of life spirituality. I was just beginning to make the transition from student to teacher; from intern to contributor to my community, church, and society. Nonetheless, I was glad for the guidance on how to live wisely and well as I grew older.

I’ve now taught, counseled, coached, and run a business for thirteen consecutive years (which for a millennial in today’s world, feels more like 23). I have built up and scaled back. I have filled my caseload and lightened my schedule. I have burned out and taken time off. I have started, paused, and stopped varying aspects of my business depending on each season’s capacity, margin, and need.

I’ve trusted the right people and I’ve trusted the wrong people. I’ve hired good employees and been a mediocre boss. I’ve social media marketed, created content, and built up my SEO—and I’ve ceased doing as much of that as my sustainability in business and simplicity of life will allow. I’ve gone from being influenced to being fierce about protecting my mental, spiritual, and relational health from needing or wanting more and more (and also, from unsafe entities both on the internet and IRL).

I have cared for myself and I’ve cared for my marriage. I have sought to understand myself, my family of origin, my husband, and all my relationship dynamics and patterns more deeply. I’ve learned to laugh at myself, to shame myself less, and that I am truly not in control. All I can help is my own healing.

I’ve studied the Bible, relationships, counseling, psychology, spirituality, and systems theory. I’ve seen more depth of hurt and healing behind closed doors than I am able to share. I’ve pursued that which I’ve felt called to do. And like anyone who’s stayed the course, I’ve thanked God for the immeasurable good of it all, and grieved as I’ve counted the cost.

In my spiritual formation exercises for my doctoral program this week, I was asked to meditate on the end of my life: “How would I feel about what I’ve done or left undone? What would appear valuable or insignificant to me from that place?”

Today, this is my honest answer: I would feel at peace and content with what I’ve done. What would appear insignificant to me from that place is the anxious hustle and busywork said to be required of being a creative professional or professional Christian these days. What will feel more valuable to me is the work I’ve done on my interior to practice resistance to cultural pressure, overproduction, and false praise. What will be important to me is my people—and my peace and presence of mind, body, and soul with them. If I’ve left anything undone vocationally (and I have), I tend to think of it as feedback for my formation and development, not a cause for shame, guilt, or regret.

For a while now, I’ve sensed God leading me into a new iteration of my vocation, dare I say, a new experience of life. I’ve felt permission to rest, an invitation to play, and released from certain parts of my calling. I don’t know exactly where we’re going—only that the tools that worked in my first half of life are not the same tools that will serve or carry me well into the second half of life. I’m going to have to come by what I suspect is a more gracious and spacious path by another way.

The Relationship Between Grief and Growth

Out of an understanding of my own story, I’ve talked with many clients about family process, complex grief, and post-traumatic growth. I’ve walked with people of all age who’ve experienced the kind of crises that suspend time in midair, slow it down, then split it right in two: before and after. I’ve talked with twenty-somethings, mid-lifers, and empty nesters who have tasted the type of suffering that will now go with them wherever they go—not because they want it to be that way, but because that’s the way it now is.

When life hands us lemons, or Leviathans, the world can feel dark, scary, like no one understands, like we’re in-it-to-win-it alone. But anyone who’s had their life rocked by one thing or another (that, sorry, can’t simply be squeezed into fruit juice and sweetened with sugar) can relate. First, to the desperation to merely survive. Second, to the will to live. Third, for those with the courage to hope against hope, to the desire to thrive.

Generational Process

The thing about being perceived as wiser than your years is that whatever wisdom you have has not been created out of thin air. It may be a gift from God, yes, and you may have prayed for it like Solomon did. But it is also something you carry because life has dealt with you honestly and/or your understanding of life has been passed down to you, generation to generation, like a patchwork quilt. (Remember, the wisest man in the world came from the line of the poet David, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, and the wrestling man who would not let go of God until God blessed him.)

The quilt that sits in my closet is three or four generations old. Its squares were chosen from a pile of leftovers, scraps of fabric tacked together because, after the clothes had been sewn, this is what they had.

There are sorrows stuffed into the batting that do, in fact, feel four generations old. There are prayers stitched into the borders that, by the grace of God, has kept it from coming apart after all these years.

And it’s because of their labor of love—that they kept stitching through aches and pains, trusting that, piece by piece, all things would eventually come together for good—that I have been handed, inherited, entrusted with something beautiful, colorful, old.

My last grandparent, Gran, died at the age of 72. When she was still living, and when we were little, my sisters and I used to take turns spending the night at her and Grandad’s house. When it was my turn, I would sit with Gran at the table, at the end where her Bible was always open. I would ask questions about life and God, and she would share stories of her childhood and thoughts on doctrine and theology (though I’m not sure she would ever think to call it that). One of her favorite Bible stories came from the book of Judges. It was the story of Deborah, a judge who led with wisdom and discerned the best course of action in battle. Fitting—both for Israel’s female judge and for Gran, who shared Deborah’s name.

Before bed, Gran would make up the couch with a sheet and old quilt from the closet. Under its comfort, cool temperature, and breathable weight, I would sleep soundly, safe and secure, until I awoke to the aromatics of coffee brewing and breakfast frying.

I was a child once, I now recall.

Final Thoughts

As I make my way into midlife, I am more aware than ever of the ways my families of origin, creation, humanity, and faith have shaped me.

I still bear the fruit of my early formation.

I am still transitioning into second half of life tasks.

I am still tempted by first half of life desires.

I still long to live childlike and free.

If this is midlife, then I welcome everything that comes or does not come to me because I know it is for my formation.² It is for more fully learning to live in the present, more deeply trusting God with the future, and more truly coming home to myself.

1. Rohr, Richard, and Brene Brown. Falling Upward, Revised and Updated: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. 2nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2023.

2. This line is a modification of Father Thomas Keating’s Welcoming Prayer: “I welcome everything that comes to me because I know it is for my healing.”