What Are Mid-Lifers Longing For?

Midlife is a time to focus on what matters.

Listen in: What Are Mid-Lifers Longing For?

In the next episode of our summer series, What Are You Longing For?, John talks with Ryan and Kelley Wampler of The Crossing Small Groups ministry about people in midlife: the challenges they face and the desires they long for.

Also known as the “crunch” years, research on levels of happiness in midlife suggests that it can be the most dissatisfying season of life. Whatever control you believed you had over how your life would turn out is going to be challenged when you reach midlife.

Spanning the ages of 35-64, midlife is a time of raising and launching kids, reaching (or not attaining) your professional goals, defining your important relationships, and watching your parents age. To say that midlife is a stressful time would be an understatement.

Many of the hopes and ideals that you believed would come true may be met with disillusion and disappointment when you realize that your life didn’t turn out as you had planned. Things you had put on the ‘backburner’ - whether emotional, relational, or spiritual - now become more pronounced and need attention.

In midlife, your longing for control is overshadowed by powerlessness as you slowly lose friendships, manage health issues, and experience the pain of regret. 

The temptation in midlife is to checkout, numb, avoid or isolate yourself from painful realities, while also pulling away from close relationships. The pressure between desires and responsibilities puts pressure on marriages, relationships, parenting, our own emotional and mental health.

We’d like to offer hope for the midlife years and see them as an opportunity for deep relational connection with God and others. John, Kelley, and Ryan share the most important thing you shouldn’t neglect during the busyness of midlife, as well as highlight the deep spiritual treasures that are in store when you surrender to God the things you can’t control.