THIS IS NOT A MIDLIFE CRISIS

You are in a crash, and crashes expose what you built your life on.

This is what happens when the structure you built your life on can no longer hold your weight.

You can’t eat.
You can’t sleep.
Your gut feels twisted.
You stare at the ceiling at 3:17am wondering how everything unraveled.
You’re ashamed of what your children see.
You’re terrified about money.
You’re terrified about providing.

And for the first time in your life, you feel like a man who cannot fix this.

That’s not a crisis.

That’s a crash.

A midlife crisis is indulgent.
A crash is humiliating.

A crisis buys a motorcycle.
A crash wonders where it will sleep.

A crisis looks exciting from the outside.
A crash feels like your insides are dissolving.

I know the difference because I lived it.

I couldn’t eat.
I felt physical pain in my gut.
I was terrified I couldn’t provide for myself, let alone my daughter.
I didn’t know where we would live.
I didn’t know how to protect her from the consequences of my collapse.

I was not having a crisis.

I was crashing.

A crash happens when:

• You built your identity on performance
• You built your worth on usefulness
• You ignored pain for decades
• You believed strength meant silence
• You thought control was the same as stability

And the structure finally gives way.

Crashes are ugly.
Crashes are painful.
Crashes strip you.
Crashes corner you.
Crashes don’t ask permission.

They are like a kick in the balls.

They bring you to your knees.

But here is the part no one tells you.

Crashes are not random.

They expose what can no longer carry you.

You may be asking where God is in this.

I did too.

When my life collapsed, I didn’t feel guided.
I didn’t feel inspired.
I didn’t feel protected.

I felt exposed.
Stripped.
Terrified.

But here’s what I came to understand:

God does not always stop collapse.

Sometimes He allows what we built in our own strength to fall.

Not to crush us.

To rebuild us.

A crash exposes what pride hid.
It exposes what performance masked.
It exposes the parts of us that could not carry the weight anymore.

And if God is involved in this moment at all,
He is not absent.

He is closer than you think.

Not as a judge.
Not as an executioner.

As the one who rebuilds foundations that finally tell the truth.

The fire did not come to end you.

It came to reveal what must change so you can rise.

You are not insane.
You are not uniquely broken.
You are not the only man whose life detonated at midlife.

You are a man whose foundation failed.

And foundations can be rebuilt.

You are here.
You are still breathing.
You are still standing.

Now get up.

— Dennis Glaze
Midlife Crash & Burn