Midlife Metamorphosis, Part One: The Rip Van Winkle Syndrome
Personal Transformation When You're Already Halfway Down the Road of Life
Help - My life is more than half over and I don't even know what I am supposed to do yet. What good am I? Why am I here? What is my calling? Is it too late? Is there any hope for me now?
Does that ring any bells? Have you ever felt like this?
Like many, you may feel that you have missed whatever boat you thought you should have been on. Well, the good news is that you can build your own boat.
Beginning today - No matter how old you are or what you have done (or not done) in the past. If you're at the point of asking these kinds of questions, you are more than ready to find some answers.
I know this because I’ve been there. It is exactly how I felt entering my fifties.
Just like Rip Van Winkle, I seemed to have snoozed for 20-plus years and awoke to a world where physically everything looked the same, but circumstances had changed. My philosophy of life had also drastically changed.
So, what was to be done? I was already over the proverbial hill. My guess is that millions of middle-aged Christian men and women in our blessed land have found themselves in this same boat.
As I contemplated the situation, I realized that, while we cannot change what is past, we do have the opportunity to start on a new path.
Every day, we can take another step, learn something new, and do something different.
The purpose of this series of articles is to lay out a clear and simple way to do that. To show that there is, indeed, hope. It is not too late.
Your life can be transformed from eke to peak no matter how old you are or where you are in life.
Early on, very few think about or know what their calling is. It seems that God has to “work a lot out of us” before He can “work in us”. (ref. Philippians 2:12-13)
We were perfectly happy to operate on auto-pilot during the early years of adulthood. Life is good. We finished whatever education we intended to get (as if education were finite), found our life-mate, settled down into a job, and began a family.
The truth is most of us never consider our life's “calling” when making these types of decisions. Very few pursue education and vocation based on what I call the 3Ps - Passion (dreams, desires), Potential (gifts/skills/abilities), and Personality (character traits). All God-given.
Granted, life is not so easily packaged into neat categories and there will be spill-over between areas of our lives. But when we take time to study these areas about ourselves, we can seek a more specific direction.
Dan Miller, author of 48 DAYS TO THE WORK YOU LOVE and its sequel NO MORE MONDAYS, has dedicated his life to “helping others understand their calling through properly aligned skills & and abilities, personality traits, values, dreams, and passions!”
He says that for the Christian, “finding the work we love is not a self-serving goal; it is a required component of fulfilling our true calling.”
Unfortunately, most of us end up conforming to the same routine as countless millions of others -
Find a mate
Get a good-paying job
Buy a house
Begin having children
Accumulate debt
Settle obscurely into a church
As a pastor friend is fond of saying, “Most become like sponges that never get squeezed out - just sitting, soaking, and souring for the rest of their lives.”
Mid-life Metamorphosis is about breaking that cycle. It’s about purposely finding and pursuing our calling in life so that we might make a difference in the lives of others.
And, as a by-product, we may end up creating a legacy for ourselves.
Next week, I will share a little of my personal journey in finding significance. If we are being honest, this is a journey that we all share in one way or another. One that is constantly being updated as the life we’ve been given unfolds.
As you face each new day, just remember this quote by one of the most remarkable people to have ever graced this earth -
“A bend in the road is not the end of the road… Unless you fail to make the turn.” - Helen Keller
I hope you will join me as we take a fresh look at the principles and process of Personal Transformation
Thank you for subscribing to Life UnCorked where the focus is on successfully navigating the issues of life from a Christian point of view.
While you’re here, check out my creative writing ‘Stack: The Talking Pen, where you’ll find fiction & non-fiction stories, poetry, art, and personal musings that illustrate the struggles, tragedies, and triumphs of life.
Cork, wonderful and deep simmerings on getting older and how we bring God into every situation of our lives!
"Your life can be transformed from eke to peak no matter how old you are or where you are in life."
I love your quote above and it truly resonates with me. I was off the path of God for 35 years and finally, as I say, "collapsed onto God's front porch" after so many years as a Prodigal. God actually tells me I am one of His "late bloomers". I certainly question a lot, WHY WHY WHY I am still here, why God keeps this failure still going, when I have seemingly done nothing but MESS THINGS UP for so many long years. I am 71 and in the early Winter of my life...and yet He tells me, "work left to do" and Holy Spirit will lead the way. God bless your work, Cork and thank you also for the encouragement you have shown to me as well, in my sometimes dark nights of the soul. At least I write about "what NOT to do" and I hope each of our personal writings on Substack will reflect that God takes each of us WHERE WE ARE at any given time and makes us step by step into the image of His dear Son. Blessings to you, I subscribed. Wendy
I can certainly relate to this. In the early part of my life I based my career goals mainly on passion, with some attention to potential, and not much to personality (which I hoped might magically improve). Despite almost consistent failures, it wasn't until I was in my 50s that it occurred to me to ask what God wanted me to do. That is, what can I actually succeed at, or what can I do best? Or, where am I needed and can do the most good? That was when things finally started coming together for me.