I’ve been thinking a lot lately about restlessness and consistency. It’s easy to get bored, to feel like life isn’t shaping up to be what you expected. We look out and see the kinds of lives others appear to be living and we wonder why ours may not be quite what we want. 

Perpetual Mid-Life Crises

Once upon a time there was a thing called a “mid-life crisis.” Perhaps you’re aware of this phenomenon. The stereotypical image that comes to mind for me when someone talks about a “mid-life crisis” is the 40-50-year-old man who buys a sports car, quits his job, leaves his family, or some combination of the three because he’s reached a point in his life and career that leaves him wondering if anything actually matters.

The reality is that men and women alike can experience mid-life crises, they can look wildly different for different people, and they don’t always happen in mid-life. But what they all do share is a common thread, a common feeling and posture.

Today, I think because of social media and our constant exposure to the millions of lives we could be living, we are always at risk of hitting what has formerly been called a “mid-life crisis.” I think the best way to describe this is simply as restlessness. 

We’re a restless people, especially the younger ones of us. I see this in my peers. I see it on social media. I see it in my own heart.

Discontentment rules the day, and to give into it is culturally acceptable—chasing our dreams, being true to ourselves, and all that other self-aggrandizing, idolatrous foolishness we sling around as “inspiration.”

Restlessness in Vocation and Sanctification

Let me share a personal example of my own restlessness, specifically with regard to vocation.

I got married in 2013 after graduating with a degree in biblical literature and immediately went through seminary fully intending to go into full-time vocational ministry as soon as possible. I longed to pastor and intended to join a church staff as soon as I was done with seminary. 

I graduated from seminary in 2017 and have never worked in full-time vocational ministry, like I had planned all along. Whenever I have stopped to dwell on this over the years, it has made me sad, no matter how content I may be with my current work.

This part of my life has not turned out like I planned, in part because of career decisions I’ve made and in part because the Lord has so graciously provided us with a local church we never want to leave. It’s hard to pursue a desire for vocational ministry when it means leaving the local church family you love! 

I am hoping the Lord is preparing and softening my heart to fulfill this desire one day. I am sure I would have been a train wreck of a pastor in the last decade or so, and God has protected untold numbers of people from that. And so, for now, I find ways to do ministry in non-vocational ways and trust the Lord with the restlessness I often feel.

This unfulfilled desire can sometimes lead to a restlessness of heart for me with regard to my work, regardless of how much I enjoy my day-to-day tasks or the people alongside whom I labor. It can produce a sort of ache that isn’t easily salved. Maybe you know this kind of feeling?

For some, vocational restlessness can come about because of an unfulfilled dream or plans that were never fulfilled. For others, vocational restlessness can be the result of great success!

When we achieve some kind of grand accomplishment early in our careers we can struggle to find the next mountain to climb—David Brooks has a whole book dedicated to this kind of subject with The Second Mountain.

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