I turned fifty earlier this year.

I generally felt okay about it, but my wife didn’t take it too well – I’m only one year older than her, so my 50th means hers is just around the corner! Is this a mid-life crisis, or am I already on the other side of mid-life?

The thing about mid-life is that it has a powerful ability to expose the real values, treasures and cravings of our hearts. Mid-life exposes what we have really been living for, and what we consider necessary to make life worth living. We become more keenly aware of the gap between what we feel our lives should look like, and what they do look like in reality. The feelings of regret, discontent and restlessness all point to the state of our hearts and reveal what we have placed our hope in.

At this life stage, it is so easy to lose your moorings and feel yourself slipping with the powerful current of our culture; a culture which idolises youth, success and wealth. It is so easy to feel that gnawing sense that things just aren’t as good as they could be or should be.

In these moments I’m reminded of a wonderful quote from Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

You see, mid-life is just another way in which our relentless, loving Heavenly Father seeks to draw us to himself.

As we get older, he wants us to turn our eyes and our hearts away from the kind of things that will provide an ever-diminishing return. Instead, he asks us to find true fulfilment and true meaning in a relationship with himself. A relationship that is given to us as a gift, through his Son. A gift of grace, not earned by our achievements and not diminished by our regrets. A relationship that will grow ever more richly and deeply, one which will give us an unfailing and steadfast security in the years to come.

Mid-life doesn’t have to be a crisis. Instead, it can provide us with a window into ourselves. It can give us a chance to know the one who has given us life and who can make our lives the way they were always meant to be.