Your life will be meaningful when...
The big lie about stages of life.
When we are young, we are sold the lie that our life will be meaningful when…
When we fulfill our dreams.
When we get married or start a family.
When we “make it” in our chosen profession…whatever that means.
When we make enough money to be comfortable or to buy that sweet car or travel or go to concerts whenever we want or….fill in the blank.
And believing this lie we spend our twenties and early thirties either preparing for a meaningful life—grad school, grunt work, working out to look good for the next Coffee Meets Bagel date—or prioritizing enjoyment and entertainment over meaningful work and relationships.
Then when we are older, looking ahead to only 5 or 10 or at best 20 years left on this earth, we sometimes are tempted to believe the the lie that our life was meaningful when…
When we had more energy and drive.
When our kids were at home
When our day to day rhythms of life included work that impacted people’s lives.
And believing this lie we spend the last few years in semi-contented retirement, knowing we cannot do what we used to (nor do we want to), but also not being able to shake the desire for life at this stage to have larger purpose. To not just be lived for ourselves.
Then of course, because of the two lies on either end of life, we fill the middle of life with immense pressure. Because in the middle of life we believe the lie, “This is the WHEN! This is the time to make your mark! This is the time to produce! This is the time to achieve something meaningful in the world! Are you missing it?”
So we start to feel like we’re always behind.
Behind our own desired timeline for settling down.
Behind others in our field or career.
Behind where we imagined we would be when we were younger.
Friends this lie—that your life can only have meaning when—runs completely counter to the invitation Jesus gives us to follow him (John 21:19). He beckons us regardless of life stage or circumstance. Accepting that call in our youth, midlife or older years infuses everything with larger purpose and deeper meaning.
Your life—whatever stage you’re in—can be immensely meaningful as that stage of life. Not as preparation for a future stage or as an homage to a prior stage. The invitation to follow Jesus into a life of meaning and purpose is for every stage of life. But it may not look quite like you expect.
Over the next few weeks, I want to have a conversation with you about what it looks like to follow Jesus in various stages of life using a framework I’ve found to be immensely helpful.
In his short but brilliant book, The Domestic Monastery, Ronald Rolheiser describes three stages of discipleship.
The struggle to get our lives together.
The struggle to give our lives away.
The struggle to give our deaths away.
Now, of course, all the normal caveats to “stages” of anything apply here:
No, they are not always sequential. Life is messy. You can be thrown back into a prior stage by death or divorce, and you can be catapulted forward by illness or injury.
Sometimes these stages overlap in your life. You may be facing one struggle in one area of life and a different struggle in another area of life. For example, you may be struggling to get your relational life together while at the same time struggling to give your financial life away.
Everyone’s struggle is different, even if our journeys often look similar from the outside.
That being said, I have found this framework to be immensely helpful. It’s a magnifying glass through which we see the contours of our souls in starker relief. So over the next several weeks we’re going to explore each one of these in turn.
And we’re going to look at them through the lens of Jesus’ final conversation with Peter in John 21.
Will you join me?
To be part of the conversation, leave a comment below. Perhaps answer the questions:
Which of Rolheiser’s struggles do you think you find yourself in at the moment? What’s one thing you wish others knew about this stage of life?
I am 67 years old and The struggle to get my life together. To know where I fit into this stage of life. I spent over 30 years parenting and then another 20 years being a grandparent - now I wonder where I fit. I look forward to hearing more. Thanks Kyle
It seems to me that our culture is so achievement oriented that we tend to see our lives as a series of destinations ... graduation, getting that job or promotion, getting married, etc. As I make my way through my 60's, I am rethinking all that. Life is a journey where the journey itself it the main thing. While there are definitely mile markers along the way, they are not the goal of life. The journey is the goal because it's in all those "in between", mundane moments where we develop a relationship with the Lord and others, where we develop our character and where we serve the Lord and embody his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
I used to think that when you got to my age you would have "arrived". As it turns out, that's not the case. In this season when many are transitioning to a season of leisure and rest, it occurs to me that this should be a time of fruitful service and a time of providing perspective to those coming after us. One of the big challenges of this season is resisting the cultural gravitational pull that tells us it's time for us to be put out to pasture, that we are no longer relevant. Even as our bodies undeniably age, there is so much we can do. We live in a time when the wisdom of age is desperately needed. When many of my generation are doubling down on the past, we need clear thinking people who have walked with the Lord over the decades to help the church imagine how God's kingdom can be expressed in our day.
I'm not sure I answered the question you posed, but I love the discussion!