I’m recently unemployed. Our family is nearing the one-year mark of when we took in two foster kids. And here I am, taking courage from “If—” by Rudyard Kipling, “Sowing Season (Yeah)” by Brand New, and a John Mark Comer teaching. What is going on?
Look, this is going to get very Midlife Crisis Dad very, very quickly. I will be—as the kids today are saying—giving large amounts of Dad Energy. So, if you a) aren’t a middle-aged dad, b) weren’t a middle-aged dad, c) don’t want to be a middle-aged dad, or d) don’t know someone who is a middle-aged dad, then, well, I’m just saying: you’ve been warned.
Okay, here we go, into a dark valley, thick with unemployment and decades-old emo songs. Yikes. But first: some poetry.
Our two older kids memorized Rudyard Kipling’s beloved poem “If—” as part of their coursework at our Christian classical co-op this year. At the co-op’s end-of-school-year celebration, they stood with the rest of their class and recited it from memory. You likely encountered this poem when you were in elementary school, like me. I don’t remember ever memorizing it, though. Which is why I was a bit surprised to find myself quietly reciting from my seat in the audience these lines from the second stanza:
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
Somehow, I knew these lines but from some other other context. As my mind dug for the source, I realized that I knew them as song lyrics. Yes, they were lyrics—but to what song? Ah, of course: an emo song. And not just any emo song. The second half of the second stanza of Kipling’s “If—” (I love the em dash) appears almost word-for-word in the song “Sowing Season (Yeah)” by Brand New (yes, the name of the band is Brand New), the opening track and lead single from their third studio album, The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me, released in 2006 when I was a junior in college.
And so, as a 40-year-old father, watching my fourth- and fifth-grade kids recite Kipling’s poem, I marveled at the fact that I had been listening to “Sowing Season (Yeah)” for almost 20 years without realizing that I had also been, in part, listening to Rudyard Kipling. How’s that for the value of classical education? How’s that for the staying power of emo? I bet Kipling never envisioned his work would rock as hard as this:
I don’t want to make this one of those click-baity, nostalgic bits of music criticism. But I do want to say a couple things about this song.
First, the lyrics in question. The Kipling lines. I want to make sure you understand how perfectly emo they are. “If—” (em dash FTW) was written around 1895, which is roughly 111 years before “Sowing Season (Yeah)” was released. Here’s how Jesse Lacy, lead singer for Brand New, transposed these lines for 20-something men trying to make something of the 21st century before they knew the full weight and significance of these words:
Is it in you now
To watch the things you gave your life to broken
And stoop and build them up with warn-out tools?
It’s the “Is it in you now” that gets me, that tweaks Kipling’s sentiment ever so slightly in a very emo way. Because as a single 20-something college student—or as a 40-year-old husband and father of three—I may not have it in me. But guess what? That’s okay.
Because—and here’s my second point—there’s good news in the twinkly, hopeful guitars that usher in the opening lines of the second verse:
Nothing gets so bad
A whisper from your father couldn’t fix it.
Your whisper’s like a bridge, he’s a river span.
Thinking of God the Father as a “river span” warrants bright and twinkly guitar chords. The father dynamic also brings in and reflects the fatherly warmth of “If—,” which is a wisdom-poem written from father to son. In some weird way, Jesse Lacy was fathering a subset of Millennials, even though we may not have realized it.
And yet, for me at least, the verb that both the poem and the song revolve around, the gravitational force that holds everything together, is “stoop.” To stoop means to get low, to come down to the reality of things, to get your hands dirty. It requires a steeled meekness, equal amounts humility and fortitude. Two virtues needed for sowing seeds and maturing to manhood.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to stoop. I have been having to practice stooping. Taking up the tools at my disposal—however worn-out—for some repair work, for some re-giving of my life to.
In particular, the stooping has centered on two things: my work / job / vocation, and life in general as our family nears the one-year anniversary of when the two foster children were placed with us.
Looking up at the second mountain
First, a quick contextual detour. This stooping, this sowing, has opened my eyes to the fact that I am likely passing through what David Brooks calls the “middle passage” of life: a valley, so to speak, between the first half of life and second half of life.
In his teaching on these two stages of life, pastor and author John Mark Comer1 borrows this mountain language from Brooks. There’s a whole treasure trove of insight in Comer’s teaching about these two stages—the gifts and opportunities inherent in them, the temptations unique to each, the beauty and purpose of maturation and holiness, and how God’s faithfulness endures throughout the course of our lives. Go listen to it; it’ll do you good—and maybe especially so if you are a father or husband wrestling with big questions about the what and why of your direction, your telos, in life.
As Comer talks about Jesus’s invitation in these respective stages, he takes time to paint a picture of what it’s like to journey through this middle valley. He captures the essence of it by quoting from the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno:
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Let’s all add some existential emphasis to the word “lost.” Midlife crises are fundamentally about being lost. Hearing this was supremely validating and relieving. I wept at the relief. This is normal. God has me here on purpose. I am not alone.
Here, then, is how this is playing out in my work and in our life post-foster care.
What do I want to be when I grow up?
One week prior to our homeschool co-op celebration, I was let go from my job of six-plus years. My position was part of what the HR euphemism machine now calls a “reduction in force.” I had a day’s notice before my last day. I was given a severance package, which I am abundantly thankful for. Things at this job had been difficult for some time, and I had already started praying about and considering next steps before I my reduction (what am I, a kind of beef stock?). In the immediate aftermath, I realized that, more than anything, I felt lost. As a 40-year-old, I found myself asking God what I should be when I grow up; what I’m being called to stoop down and “build up with worn-out tools.” Or, to use language a little later on in “If—,” what it looks like to “start again at [my] beginnings / And never breathe a word about [my] loss”?
I sometimes feel a tinge of shame for not having an answer to these questions—to feeling lost. But I’ve come to accept that struggling to find a clear answer is a normative part of walking this middle passage between life’s first and second mountains.
What’s more, even though I may feel lost, I am in fact not lost. Jesus does not lose what belongs to him. I am hopeful and confident in this season of sowing and exploring work opportunities that align with my gifts, desires, and the world’s needs. There are good things already growing in this in-between time. God is merciful. I do not feel panicked. I am not giving unemployed-in-Greenland vibes.
Because finding the next job does not mean that I’ve solved all the questions or gotten un-lost. Faithfully climbing this second mountain is about much, much more than whatever my next job turns out to be. And feeling lost about my job is a trigger—an uncomfortable invitation—to explore the deeper significance and possibilities ahead.
One year later, is this real life?
It is hard to believe that nearly a year has passed since our adventures in foster care and as a household of seven began. It feels like it was much longer than a year ago and like yesterday at the same time.
The two kiddos were placed on June 4, 2024 and returned home in January 2025. As I wrote in those hazy June days immediately after they were placed, recapping all of this feels surreal. We really fostered two kids for seven months, after having less than a day’s notice. And then they were gone. We’re a bit like little David after his dental procedure, unsure of what’s real and how many fingers we have.
Yes, this really happened.
Now, as we stand on the precipice of summer one year later, Lindsey and I feel a touch wary. Like, is something else going to come up out of the blue and send life off into some other unlooked for adventure? Or will we get a summer of rest and play and “normalcy”?
It’s not that we are just now stooping to repair what was broken or neglected since last June. In very big and real and hard ways, we’ve been stooping and gathering ourselves over the last few months, and things feel surprisingly good and hopeful. We’re praying for and dreaming about what’s next, and what we want to give our lives to this summer and next school year.
There is so much to thank God for. In this spirit of gratitude, we’ve been taking a prolonged celebratory lap here at the end of the homeschool year, reflecting on how well our kids did in their school work and their extra curricular activities, even with two additional household members causing no small amounts of chaos for most of that time. They persevered; they grew so much; they learned so much more than any textbook could ever teach. I am so proud of them. And I am so proud of my wife. She continued to give of herself to our kids while standing (and stooping) in the gap for two orphaned souls, utterly exposed to generations’ worth of chaos and sin. It was a garden of trials, and her true beauty blossomed under the shadow of God’s gracious wings.
Over the last couple weeks, she and I have spent a lot of time in the garden. We’ve planted perennials in our front garden beds and found sunnier spots in our yard for a few select garden vegetables. She and the kids put in a flower garden in our backyard. Every starter, every seed a herald of “restoration that will / forever mend all sorrow and comfort all grief,” as Douglas McKelvey writes in “A Liturgy for the Planting of Flowers.”
Coda
My prayer is to be surprised by what the Lord brings as we stoop to build and try to follow his leading. Even if our tools feel a little worn-out, or even if I feel worn-out. Jesus does not tire (Isaiah 40:28) and he does his best work with those who know they are lost and worn-out. Regardless of life stage, I do think he is always bringing his people in and out of sowing seasons where the results are uncertain and the mountain looks steep. But God is a constant gardener (John 15:1; John 20:15-16). The middle passage, the “forest dark,” does not feel so overwhelming with flowers in the ground.
Just keep digging.
- John Mark Comer is so hot right now. He’s been called the Billy Graham of Gen Z. There’s a lot I like about JMC and there’s much of his stuff that, frankly, drives me batty. In most of his material that I’ve encountered, I find myself doing a lot of “Yes, and“-style rebuttals. I do not endorse or agree with everything he writes or preaches, even in the teaching I link to here. But, he does have a lot to offer, and this particular message is worth your time if you are anywhere similar to me in age, family life, career path, disposition to listening to emo, etc. ↩︎
Oh, Trevor! Thanks for writing about relatable struggles.