Restlessness

And the goodness of just consistently showing up over and over and over again

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. I felt some measure of this when I wrote two books around the age of 30. I had always wanted to publish books of some kind, and I did it quite young. Very few people bought them (a few thousand), but I nonetheless accomplished my goal. And yet, restlessness abounds!

“Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun,” the Qoheleth says in Ecclesiastes 2:11.

I like what Cal Newport writes in Slow Productivity, “A key tenet of slow productivity is that grand achievement is built on the steady accumulation of modest results over time. This path is long. Pace yourself.” Newport isn’t talking about restlessness or the vaporious nature of dreams quickly fulfilled, but I think his wisdom applies in this context.

It’s so easy, especially in our sort of hustle-and-grind culture, to push and push and push to the point of breaking our spirits when we either: a) don’t achieve our goals or b) achieve our goals and wonder what’s left that actually matters. “Damned if I do; damned if I don’t,” as the old saying goes.

It is almost as if the pursuit and fulfillment of our dreams cannot possibly be our source of hope and contentment!

Newport’s advice is good for more than just the work realm, I think. I don’t mean to over-spiritualize his work, but consider what he writes in the context sanctification: “steady…modest results over time. The path is long. Pace yourself.”

We can find comfort in Paul’s reminder in Philippians 1:6, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

And also in his encouragement to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15:56-58:

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Even as we can be easily discouraged and grow seriously restless in our vocation or our sanctification, it is imperative we don’t just pull some kind of rip cord and attempt to move on at the first feeling of restlessness or discomfort. Our labor is not in vain, even if our heart aches for some kind of unfulfilled longing.

We must not be lured into having feelings of a mid-life crisis every time we see someone else living out a dream we have had for ourselves or when we haven’t grown into the kind of person we want to be quite yet. We shouldn’t just run after another hope of fulfillment in a faraway place or a new line of work.

It Is Good to Just Show Up

Our church recently started hosting a Thursday night church service, and one of the women who serves in the children’s ministry on Thursday nights used to be one of the volunteer leaders in our youth ministry when I helped lead it as an unpaid, part-time staff member back in 2017-2020.

This volunteer said a younger mom showed up to Thursday night service recently who attended our youth group back in high school. I remembered the former student, and recalled her being at events, but often not seeming very interested in what I was teaching—who can blame her! ;)

The former student, now young mom seemed to have been out of church for some time and experienced some difficult life along the way. She said to the kids ministry volunteer she recognized from her time in youth group, “I knew coming back to this church would feel like coming home.”

Man. Praise God.

I can tell you that much of the time I was leading in youth group with my beloved co-volunteers from 2017-2020, it didn’t feel like we were making a huge difference. We weren’t seeing a bunch of kids get saved or commit their lives to Christ—we weren’t seeing a bunch of kids at all (it was a small youth ministry)!

I was not a great teacher. I was more spiritually immature then than I am now. I was restless, longing to be in vocational ministry. But despite the restlessness I felt and the myriad other imperfections in my leadership, we all kept showing up for the students.

Consistency is a virtue. When we get restless vocationally, spiritually, relationally, or otherwise, it’s easy to get discouraged and just move on to something else. It has become disturbingly acceptable, it seems, for us to get bored with where we are at and chase our hopes and dreams at the cost of faithfulness and consistency.

Our feeds have fed us the lie that life is meant to be exciting or entertaining at every turn, and when it’s not we think something is wrong.

It is boring to be consistent and faithful, and that’s okay.

Much of life is made up of unassuming rhythms and routine schedules, which is also okay.

You and I will not save or even measurably “change the world,” and that’s okay, too.

But we get restless because we aren’t getting what we want. We become discontent with God’s work in his own ways and in his own time.

Sometimes it’s good to just show up in the same place, over and over, for a long time, even if you’re restless. And God, in his kindness, may let you see the fruit of your faithfulness.