Donald Miller's Blog, page 15

God Didn’t Answer My Prayer. Here’s What I Learned.

If you were around in the 1990’s and you listened to country music, then you are familiar with Garth Brooks’s hit song “Unanswered Prayers”. If country music wasn’t your first love, the song was so widely popular, chances are even a (crazy) country music hater could hum along.

“Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers

Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs

That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care

Some of God’s greatest gifts

are unanswered prayers.”

The song tells a story of a happily married man who runs into his high school sweetheart at a football game and remembers how hard he prayed for her to be his gal, then his wife and love of his life walks up to him and he thanks God that the prayer went unanswered.

I was in high school when I fell for this song.

I remember being 16 years old, a tad bit dramatic, and laying on the floor in my room listening to this song and thinking about the boy I loved, praying this song would not apply to my life. As it turns out, I married that same boy four years later and we’ve been married now for close to 14 years.

Photo Credit: deveion acker, Creative Commons

It was a few years into my marriage when I experienced what it really was like to sit in the dark places of unanswered prayers. For the first time in my privileged and cushy life, painful, life altering realities, came at me swinging, often punching me square in the face, knocking me to my knees.

Some of my prayers were not answered in the ways I had hoped for, but were quickly met with satisfying alternative outcomes. In those moments I would thank God for His swiftness and recognize His plan was so much better than my own.

Other prayers of my heart weren’t so swiftly satisfied.

These prayers were ones I felt my very life hinged on. Maybe you are familiar with these prayers. Maybe you are in the midst of praying these kinds of prayers in this season of your life. The kind of prayers that bring us to our knees, pleading with God to give us some kind of an answer but instead, all we hear is a deafening silence.

For years I sat in that silence, praying, pleading.

I begged God to make me a mom, prayed for an answer to my mysterious infertility, pleaded for Him to fill my womb with the child I desired.

I prayed this prayer for years and for years felt my cries were met with a big fat silence.

More than seven years have passed since that season of heartache in my life.

Today I find myself on the other side of things.

Today I can look back to what was and clearly see how God was working. How much God loved me.

Today I can look at my three children, the breathtaking human beings who call me mom, the three children who grew in another woman’s womb and came to be mine through adoption, and with a deafening shout of joy, I can thank God for my unanswered prayers.

And as I do so, I realize my prayers today look a lot different than my prayers years ago.

Because the thing I learned the most when God didn’t answer my prayer is that maybe, just maybe, I’m praying for the wrong things.

I’m not saying it was bad or wrong for me to pray that I would get pregnant or for me to desire to start a family. I’m just saying that through that experience, I learned what it meant to chase after God’s heart and plan for my life, rather than trying to convince Him of my own.

This doesn’t mean we should stop praying for the things in life that matter.

Of course let’s continue to pray for healing or a job or restored relationships. Let’s keep praying for safety or peace or provision. Because God wants us to to bring it all to Him. What I am suggesting, and what I’ve learned with each and every unanswered prayer, is to bring it all to Him with my hands wide open.

To say “God what I want more than anything else is what you want for me.”

Or, as Jesus said: Not my will, Lord, but yours be done.”

It’s a bold prayer my friends, because chances are the God who created you, who adores you more than you could ever fathom; the God who put you on this earth for a reason and a purpose, wants even bigger and greater things for us than any prayer we could think to pray.

His love and care are too large for us to hold onto with a tight fist.

I still ask God for specific things to happen or not happen in my life, because I believe He cares about the things I desire and the hopes hidden in the corners of my heart.

But more than that, I know His plan for my life blows my plans out of the water. And so I’m learning, more and more, to come to God with my hands wide open, asking Him to give me a heart that longs for the heart of God.

What God Sees When He Looks At You

When I was 25 years old, I paid $15,000 for my first house. They wanted $20,000, but willingly took my offer.

If you saw the house, you’d know why I got a deal.

Quite a few window panes were broken out, the kitchen had only a sink (no cabinets), and the floor was lower in the middle of the house than at the edges. (This was due to the fact that the previous owners decided to cut the main floor joist in order to put in a heating vent).

Though the previous owners had departed, the house was inhabited by an extended family of mice and a small bat.

I named the bat Nicodemus because he only came out at night.

The house fit nicely into the neighborhood.

Mine was one of the more upscale places on the block. It was one of those neighborhoods caught between the interstate and progress, and both were passing us by. However, after moving in, I found I had the most intriguing of neighbors, and we soon became friends.

Photo Credit: Holly Lay, Creative Commons

There was “Sis” who lived next door and was married to a quiet alcoholic, Walter. Her mother, “Mama” lived across the street, and let me borrow her lawnmower if I’d mow her yard, too.

Mary, an operator with AT&T, lived on my left, and Everett her cab driver husband, who liked driving more than being at home. Mrs. Nichols, who regularly ran for mayor, lived a few doors down. (She consistently received only 8 votes, all from the neighbors).

Across the street in the apartments was Big Malcolm, who obviously had lots of friends, because each day, people visited him every fifteen minutes or so and left with small gift bags.

And then there was a woman whose name I never knew.

She also lived in the apartments. Her weathered face bore the scars of a rough life, and her frail frame seemed unsteady. She too had frequent visitors—all men. We all knew what she did to make money, and we didn’t like her very much.

One night, my roommate, Eddie, and I were sitting out on the front porch, as good Southerners do. He began playing his guitar, and soon the neighbors had joined us for “Old Gospel Night.” Sis, Mama, Mary, Mary’s mom and a few other wonderful misfits were there, singing old hymns together.

We finally sang everyone’s favorite, “The Old Rugged Cross.”

We sang the first verse and the chorus, the second verse and the chorus, and then it happened. Toward the end of the chorus of the second verse, a figure started walking through the darkness toward the house.

It was her. The woman we’d shunned.

She came up on the porch, nestled on the railing, and joined in on the third verse. And when we got to the chorus, she belted out a harmony that would have rivaled Vince Gill.

It was the most beautiful, lilting harmony I’ve ever heard.

And I’ll cling to the old rugged cross

Til my trophies at last I lay down.

I will cling to the old rugged cross.

And exchange it some day for a crown.

She sang the forth verse and the last chorus, and then wandered silently to her apartment.

I was silenced by my arrogance and judgment, Tears welled up in my eyes.

While I had been sneering at a prostitute, I had completely missed a deeper truth – that the woman across the street was once a little girl who had been in Sunday school, singing songs of hope and redemption. And somewhere she’d lost her way, and had been wandering a long, long time.

And all she wanted was to come home.

I was reminded of a verse in the New Testament in Romans (4: 17). In essence it says, “He is a God who sees things that are not as though they were.” In other words, God has an imagination for people.

God sees beyond what is, to what could be.

Think about it – he didn’t see Abraham and Sarah as a childless couple. Rather he saw the parents of a new nation. And he didn’t see Paul as a killer of Christians, Moses as a stutterer, or Mary Magdalene as a whore. No, he imagined them as they would be.

Since that day on the porch, I’ve tried to adopt that mindset. I’d encourage you to adopt it too. Don’t believe what you see. That’s boring. Instead, develop an imagination, for yourself and for others. And by doing so, you’ll learn about mercy and grace.

You see, everyone.

Everyone has a song they need to sing, and they know it by heart.

Two Lists I Make Every Morning

Every working day I fill out a Storyline Productivity Schedule and one of the things it disciplines me to do is to make two lists. The first is a list called “If I Could Live Today Over Again I’d” and the other is a list of “Things I Get to Enjoy Today”.

The things I write on those lists don’t come naturally. I’m forced to sit and think about them, sometimes for several minutes. But they serve me. In fact, they serve me so well I no longer skip them.

Here’s why each list is so important:

If I could live today over gain, I’d…

I borrowed this concept from renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl who taught his patients to treat each day as though they were living it for a second time, only this time around to not make the same mistakes. It’s an amazing little mind trick, actually.

What it does is cause us to evaluate the decisions we will make that day even before we make them, and as such, avoid regret.

It’s a powerful tool to help us not live in reaction but instead to accept our God-given agency.

When I sit and think about what I’d do if I could live today over again, I always write down that I’d spend more time in prayer or invest in close friends. My life becomes much more relational because I make this list.

Things I get to enjoy today…

I’ve a confession. I love to work. I love my job and I love my life. What we teach at Storyline works better than any other life-planning system I know and I often feel like proof.

That said, a life building Storyline isn’t a complete life, and at times I get bogged down with the work and feel as though life is passing me by.

I borrowed this list from Dr. Neil Fiore, a leading expert on helping people to stop procrastinating. Dr. Fiore believes one of the reasons people procrastinate is because they feel like if they work they’ll be missing out on an enjoyable life.

Of course, it all backfires because they don’t get their work done and then don’t enjoy life either because they feel guilty. So, Dr. Fiore developed this helpful list as a tool. In the morning, simply write down all the things you get to enjoy today and you won’t feel like you’re missing out on life.

In fact, you’ll be much more likely to get your work done knowing you aren’t missing out on life at all but are simply getting your work done first so you can enjoy it without guilt later.

You can start making both lists every morning, if you like. If you keep at it, it becomes a habit and life becomes more productive and enjoyable. It all starts in the mind.

When Is It Time To Let A Friend Go?

A while back, I spent a weekend wandering around a city where my good friend lives. I didn’t see him while I was there. I actually haven’t spoken to him in a few years.

We’ve lost touch and reaching out at this point would have felt strange.

I was there for a music festival with another friend and as we drove, I remembered him, this friend I’ve lost touch with, and wondered how he was. I wondered where his house was, or if I would run into him. I wondered if his family was ok and if he still looked the same.

We drove to and from the festival, and I wondered how the people of our past can continue to be a part of us.

I always hated saying goodbye to new friends at the end of summer camp, and the end of the school year and at graduations and after mission trips. I wanted to keep an email chain going with everyone so that none of us ever had to say goodbye.

We could all just keep in touch forever.

Of course by now I’ve realized this is impossible. What usually happens is you make promises to keep in touch, you sign each other’s yearbooks and then make three or four phone calls, write a couple of emails, send an un-returned text message, and it’s done. You sort of putter out.

And this, I’ve come to understand, is ok.

It’s ok for friendships to putter out because not everyone you cross paths with in life is meant to be on your journey for the long haul.

Some people come into your life for just a short time—and that’s okay.

My friend from above was pivotal for me at the time I knew him. We learned from each other and did our best to keep in touch and then years later I can drive around his city and smile and not feel bad about not texting him to let him know I’m in town.

We’re living our lives. We remember each other. It’s enough.

But then there is the other type of the friend. The friends who sticks around, regardless of your pitiful keeping-in-touch efforts.

I have a close friend I talk to on the phone every few months and see once or twice a year. We’ve lived at least a couple of countries apart for most of our adult lives, yet neither of us feels like we’re puttering out.

We know we are meant to be on each other’s journeys for the long haul even if that looks like an annual, rushed “I’m running through the airport, just wanted to say hey” kind of phone call.

Some relationships stick, while others, even with the greatest efforts, just don’t.

I believe this is for a reason.

I believe friendship should be as natural as possible. If you’re struggling with maintaining a relationship that is, despite your efforts, puttering out, don’t beat yourself up about it. It may be time to consider letting go of the relationship.

And as you walk forward, you may not have that person by your side anymore, but you will have what they taught you. You will have memories. In this way, I don’t know if we can ever really “lose touch” with anybody.

What I’ve learned since summer camp and high school graduation is that if we continued every friendship we’ve ever made, we would live impossibly exhausting social lives. It’s best, and healthiest, to gently let go of those friendships you know are fading away and gently, with gratitude, hold onto the ones you know never will.

How I Used Twitter to Write a Book

Writing books is a no-feedback game. Certainly you can ask friends to review your work, but that’s dangerous. The truth is you know when it’s good and you know when it’s not and if you’re asking for opinions you’re likely not doing your best work.

That said, I recently used Twitter to find out what themes and ideas would stimulate thought. I would tweet an idea I was writing about, and if it got re-tweeted or stimulated conversation, I was more eager to use it in my book.

I found out many things using Twitter.

I found out people are much more tough than you’d think, and I didn’t have to coddle them. I also found out I could speak with authority and nobody would be offended, that is, if I stayed within my areas of expertise.

I also found people really don’t like it when I go negative. Even if I tweet about how much I hate my stapler, people get upset. That’s mostly a personality thing. I’m sure Rush Limbaugh could get away with a little more than I can, but my audience generally doesn’t want to hear me gripe about things.

Learn from your audience.

If you’ve got a writing project going, here are four ways you could involve Twitter:

1. Tweet a chapter idea and ask if anybody has given the idea any thought. If you hear crickets, skip that chapter.

2. Got a powerful one-liner? Tweet it and see if it gets re-tweeted. You might turn that one-liner into a complete paragraph or more.

3. Stuck on an idea? Tweet and ask anybody if they’ve read an interesting article about it. Twitter is a great resource tool.

4. Use Twitter to summarize an idea. The great thing about 140 characters is it makes you condense your thinking, which is often the essence of good writing.

How have you used Twitter to improve your writing?

Why It’s Not Always Good to Adapt

My dishwasher broke recently. The stopper on one of the tracks just broke off, so now if you pull that top rack all the way out, the whole thing just sort of falls.

It happened about seven days ago at the time I’m writing this, but I don’t really think about it that much anymore, because by about day three, I had already adapted to the situation. I know exactly how far to pull that top rack out without it falling, and I know that if there are too many dishes in there, I have to put my second hand underneath the rack to support the weight.

It’s funny because I could just fix the thing. But no. Instead I adapted.

We’re remarkably adaptable creatures, us humans.

Our ability to adapt is one of our greatest assets and also one of our greatest vulnerabilities. When it comes to a dishwasher, it’s not that big of a deal. I mean, I could order the part for three dollars and have it shipped to my house and probably repair the thing in about two minutes, but instead, I just figured out a way around the problem.

Photo Credit: Joe St.Pierre, Creative Commons

Sometimes it’s easier to learn to live with a problem than to fix it.

And although it’s great for us to be able to adapt to less-than-ideal circumstances, especially for those problems in life that don’t have easy fixes, the real issue comes when we adapt too easily or too quickly to a situation that could absolutely be solved.

Or worse, we adapt to a circumstance that shouldn’t be tolerated at all.

We might not even notice we were adapting.

We adapt to a boss who overworks and under-appreciates us.
We adapt to a relationship that is abusive or cold.
We adapt to a friendship where we have to do all the work.
We adapt to telling lies—first small white lies and moving onto bigger ones.
We adapt to eating foods that do not make us feel good or fuel our bodies.
We adapt to a physical pain without exploring what is really wrong.
We adapt to unhealthy environments, patterns, behaviors

There are all kinds of ways we adapt

And not all of them are good or healthy for us.

Here’s how Henry Cloud puts it in his book Necessary Endings:

You might have become acclimated to the misery in some way. You have gotten so used to it that you no longer feel it as pain but view it as normal. Pain by its very nature is a signal that something is wrong and action is required. So pain should be driving you to do something to end it. But if you are not making moves to end the dull misery of something going nowhere, then you may have told yourself nothing is really “wrong”—it is just the way it is. You are stuck with a chronic ache and it feels like the new normal.

I think the real reason we adapt is because it’s easier.

If you have a sprained ankle, it’s easier, in a way, to sort of limp around in denial than it is to go to the doctor, take the necessary time to rest, to wrap it properly, to really heal.

If your boss overworks you and under-appreciates you, it’s easier—at least in this exact moment—to just do what he says and keep him quiet, than it is to confront him, to stand up for yourself, or to quit and find a new job.

If you’re in an unhealthy relationship, it’s easier, for the time being, to stay and put up with the drama than to face the reality of what it would mean to be alone.

Adaptation is easier. But of course easier doesn’t mean better.

I’m learning to see that there are just some areas of my life where adaptation is not the answer. I won’t adapt my character to keep the peace, for example; I won’t adapt my creative intuition, just so I can make a few extra dollars. I won’t adapt how I deserve to be treated, just to keep a relationship.

There are just some areas where it’s better that we don’t adapt.

Oh, and don’t worry. I went ahead and ordered that part for my dishwasher.

Why You Never Need to Feel Shame

I sat having a conversation with a young man whose life is at a crossroads, largely in ruins, because of the broken places of his soul and his choices. He comes from a similar religious heritage as I do, so we have language in common. In this moment, he believes he is utterly depraved; worthless.

His statement to me: “I am nothing but a piece of sh*t.”

He is making a declaration about what he believes is the most basic and fundamental truth of himself.

Photo Credit: kris krüg, Creative Commons

What he is saying isn’t true, but he believes it. Any process of healing in his life will be disempowered by that lie. I recognize it because I used to believe it, and religiously, I had been taught that God saw me that way, too.

Shame often gets mixed up with guilt, as if they were the same.

They are not. There are many ways to approach the distinction but here is one that has been most helpful to me:

Guilt is that I have done something wrong. Shame is I ‘am’ something wrong.

Guilt has to do with a transgression, as benign as a mistake or as overt as an intentional violation.

In the story of the Garden of Eden, there is a breaking of a command.

On the surface, it had to do with eating of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but at a deeper level, it was about a relational betrayal of trust. Eve transgressed through thorough deception. Adam transgressed through willful violation.

Many of us growing up in a religious environment related to guilt as legal requirement; the breaking of a rule or law. The validity of those rules and laws were rarely questioned. The only real concern was whether or not I had broken or violated them.

How or why you experience guilt is often very different from my feeling guilty.

I think that much of religious education is the defining of the rules so that there is more to feel guilty about. Once I know what the rules are, I can compare my performance against that of others and feel appropriately self-righteous and judgmental.

Only as we grow and mature do we begin to realize that there are fundamental relational truths that are so much deeper than laws and rules. These can be summed up by the law of love, or Golden Rule, but they center around expressing a life full of other-centered, self-giving love.

But shame? Shame is a different beast altogether.

Shame has to do with an accusation against my very being.

Guilt might be associated with shame as a prosecuting witness, proof that shame’s proclamation that I am a worthless piece of crap is true. When a parent, or adult, tells a child that they are useless, or stupid, or fat, or dumb, this is not about guilt, but a declaration of shame aimed at dismantling the very being of a person.

Religion wouldn’t be so ruthless as to use that language.

It has perfected a host of other ways to say it even more subtle and destructive. “You are depraved, utterly wicked, a Jezebel, a wretch, full of sin etc.” But the power of religion is that shame’s authority is not simply another human being, but God. These are God’s judgements against you. And once embraced, you will live your life at a deficit, always in the red, forever a sin away from perdition.

True guilt has a legitimate place in our human experience. We violate, betray, hurt ourselves, others and the creation we dwell within, and Godly sorrow at our transgressions is important and good.

Shame has no proper place. It is an attack against the “very good” creation that God has brought into being, “you.”

This informed my response to the young man I referenced previously.

“You are most fundamentally a very good creation, long before anything was broken,” I told him. “The imago dei (image of God) in you is the truest about you. So even though right now, I think you are full of sh*t, you are not a piece of sh*t.”

Unless we come to know the Truth about who we are as human beings, the ways of our lives will never match it. We need to be appropriately sorrowful about our failures and about our choices not to love, to ask for forgiveness; this is true guilt.

But we also must confront and disagree with shame and the lies it whispers in the fabric of our souls.

Be Brave Enough to Make a Mess

Vulnerability is less like a sweet golden retriever, all directness and love, and more like a cat—unpredictable, reserved.

You don’t boss it. You don’t march right into it. You create space for it, and then it slides into your midst whenever it decides, taking its own sweet time, frankly.

To be honest, my small group, a group I adore, has not been an easy nut to crack in terms of vulnerability. Some people lay it all out there to whoever will listen. This group is not like that. Again, I super-love them, but spilling our guts is not really in our repertoire.

So I’m learning to create the space for it.

And then wait. Like you’re waiting for a cat to come out from behind the couch, sort of acting like you don’t even care, but you really, really do.

Photo Credit: Brandon King, Creative Commons

We’re learning we do better around the table than we do in the official “discussion” part of the evening in the living room—so much so that we’ve abandoned the living room entirely, because it seems with this group that the good stuff happens around the table.

There’s something about keeping your hands busy, like it tricks your mind and you just start talking.

And there’s something about a messy table.

The crumpled napkins, me puttering around the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, making tea and slicing cake.

I’ve even found that if I suspect that sneaky old cat is going to wander out at any second, I get up from the table and bang around in the kitchen a little. I can still hear because it’s only like 5 feet away, but it breaks that pressure-y spell and the words start coming out. Counterintuitive, certainly, but effective.

Doing anything shoulder-to-shoulder helps, I’ve found.

Running together, cooking together, working on motorcycles together. My darling brother is a motorcycle guy, and there’s basically not enough money in the world that could make him, say, go to coffee with one of the other motorcycle shop guys and stare at each other over a latte. They’d sooner die.

But in the shop, shoulder to shoulder, tinkering and fixing, the big truth comes sliding out, the same way it does around the messy table, just when you think it won’t—like a stubborn, beautiful cat.

Vulnerability happens when you’re brave and start first.

And when you hold a safe space and wait, when you log enough hours over time to create something really durable for that truth to tumble out onto, in a big, lovely, rich mess.

How can you begin to create an environment of vulnerability around your table or in your community?

How I Learned to Not Be Overwhelmed

One of the main problems I deal with is trying to manage too many projects. And most of those projects are big.

Photo Credit: Joe St.Pierre, Creative Commons

If you’re like me, you have trouble breaking down massive projects into manageable pieces and executing each piece well. And when I can’t break things down easily, I tend to freeze. This creates obvious problems. But I learned something from Dr. Henry Cloud awhile back that helped tremendously.

Henry was working (or not working) on his doctoral dissertation and, like me, found himself frozen by the magnitude of the project. And so rather than diving in, he went and played golf.

And he played a lot of golf.

But as the deadline drew closer, and his stress levels increased, Henry got worried. And so he began to pray.

God brought him to a specific passage in Proverbs that says: “Go to the ant, you sluggard. Observe his ways and become wise.” (Proverbs 6:6)

Henry certainly wasn’t and isn’t a sluggard. He’s an incredibly hard worker. But he looked up the meaning of the word sluggard and it actually meant something more like “one who is afraid” and realized part of his problem was he was afraid of the complexity of his dissertation. After he shared his troubles with a friend, the friend bought him an ant farm. Henry watched the ant farm for a few hours but saw nothing that helped. Ants were just crawling around, taking grains of sand from one side of the farm to the other.

So Henry got up and played more golf.

A week passed and Henry happened to notice the ant farm on the back of his desk. It had miraculously transformed. The ants had created tunnels and highways and an intricate architecture. Simply moving one grain of sand at a time, over a long period of time, the ants had created an entire new world.

Henry knew then what he had to do. Piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, he worked like an ant. He just picked up one little sentence and moved it from the recesses of his brain to the flickering cursor on his computer. Then he picked up another sentence and did the same.

At the end of six months, Henry had his dissertation.

And today we all call him Dr. Cloud.

I took comfort in that story and I’ve changed the way I work. I don’t get overwhelmed as much anymore. I just get up and move grains of sand around, piece by piece. And things are starting to take shape.

So what do we do when we’re overwhelmed? Here are some tips I learned from Henry, the Bible and Ants:

1. List my major projects.

2. Write down what I want each of them to look like when they are completed.

3. Break each of them down into their minor parts.

4. Work daily, like an ant, knowing that each little sentence, each little paragraph is moving me closer toward the final vision.

Now, things aren’t so overwhelming.

Consider the ant, oh frightened one!

Why You Need a Mid-Life Crisis

I am middle aged. By every definition I fall squarely in that season of life. I am in my mid-forties, think about my mortgage more than I should, and have three kids (a teen, a tween, and a toddler).

The other night my wife and I were joking with friends about how we are due for a mid-life crisis. She was quick to remind me that neither a sports car nor a mistress was in the budget. Laughing, she told me I would have to come up with something else.

The conversation got me thinking.

At its core, a mid-life crisis is a grand moment of clarity. In the crisis we come to grips with our own mortality and realize that the life we are living is inconsistent with what we really want. It is an analysis that compares our actions with our core priorities and expectations.

Photo Credit: Amanda Tipton, Creative Commons

The expectations some of us hold are laced with selfishness and narcissism. This can lead us to abandon jobs, families, and other responsibilities and try to live as if we are someone we are not. Insert the common tropes of overcompensating middle managers, convertibles, and affairs. This type of mid-life crisis inevitably disappoints.

There is a more noble option.

Our expectations and what we most want can lead to good decisions if they are centered on generous and loving priorities. In this context, we may reorient our lives away from jobs we merely endure to vocations about which we are passionate.

We focus on the core relationships in our lives and reconnect with our spouse, children, parents, and faith. We realize that we have allowed the momentum of circumstances to unwittingly carry us away from what matters most. We take the good things we have been putting off until someday – and make them action items for today.

That is a crisis worth having regularly.

The problem with a mid-life crisis is not the crisis itself. If there is a problem, it stems from trading things of real value for hollow promises. Destructive and irresponsible behavior is not the inevitable result of a mid-life crisis. The mid-life crisis itself can be quite helpful because it forces us to ask ourselves several questions:

Is my life out of alignment with my core priorities?
Is there a dream I once harbored that needs to be released from the dock and allowed to sail?
Is there a relationship that has been left untended for far too long?
Is the path I am on taking me to a destination I actually desire?

At some point, everyone will be confronted with the foundational questions of a mid-life crisis. Regardless of whether they result in circumstances obvious to others, they will reveal the quality of our priorities – and our choice of priorities determines whether the answers generate destruction or growth.

This sort of assessment is valuable.

Especially if it’s done as a way of making sure our lives and relationships are healthy. There is no reason to wait for mid-life to create a possible crisis by asking these questions. Likewise, it is never too late for a mid-life crisis.

Perhaps if we asked these questions of ourselves (and asked them of our friends) on a regular basis, the answers would not yield a crisis at all. Instead only minor course corrections may be needed.

So the question remains, “Are you overdue for a good mid-life crisis?”