Sometimes, someone will say something to us that will stop us in our tracks.

I had a moment like that five years ago.

I was at The Leaders Journey, a formative 3-year journey for Katie and me. But over lunch one day, I was talking with one of the leaders about that. He’s an older pastor and counselor who said something that stopped me in my tracks.

He looked at me and said, “Josh, in your 20’s and 30’s, you have the energy to outrun your story and scars, but in your 40’s and 50’s, you don’t.”

At the time, I didn’t think I truly understood how important this truth is or how often I would think about it and refer back to it in my own thinking and conversations with others.

As I entered my 40s, I saw this to be true. But I have also seen it not only in my story but the story of others.

There are a few reasons for that.

In our 40’s, we often wake up one day and look at our lives and think, “I thought I’d be somewhere different by now.” Maybe you thought you’d be married or have kids by now or that those things would be different than they are. Maybe you thought you’d finish school, start a business by now or be further along financially than you are.

Another reason is in our 20’s and 30’s, we are building things. There is a lot of time left when things don’t work as expected. If you lose a job in your 20s or fail at work or school, it feels easier to brush it off and move on. In our 40’s and 50’s, life feels shorter. The days feel shorter. More responsibilities are placed on us, and it is harder for us to think about those dreams.

Third, we dream a lot in our 20’s and 30’s. I talk to very few people over 40 still dreaming and hoping for the future. Many of us fall into this rut of thinking nothing in our lives can change or move forward. Many of us think this is how it is and this is how it will always be.

And lastly, in our 20’s and 30’s, we have the energy to work and work. We have the energy to pretend things aren’t there, and we fill our days and weeks with many things to keep us busy. We don’t think about our stories and scars. Later in life, our energy goes down, and slowly, we can’t outrun our story anymore. We come face to face with what has happened to us and what we have done.

The reality is, your story can be changed and redeemed at any point, but the longer we live with our story without changing it, the easier it feels not to change or to lose hope and think it can never change.

It makes sense. The older we get, the more of life we experience. 

The older I get, the more acquainted with unmet expectations I become. 

The more I see the door to disappointment and cynicism. 

One of my favorite quotes about this idea is from Lysa TerKeurst: “Sometimes, to get your life back, you have to face the death of what you thought your life would look like.”

Unless you wrestle with your story, you will always chase those things that fill the broken places. Part of being able to dream is allowing God to heal those places.

I heard Gordon MacDonald, a pastor in his 80’s, say recently: “At some point in your life, to be a happy old person, you must decide what kind of older person you want to become and then move towards that.” Otherwise, you end up miserable because old age catches you by surprise.