Some people talk about faith as if it’s something you either have from the beginning or you don’t. Life isn’t always that simple. For Eli Brackenbury, faith quietly returned to his life much later, after years of ordinary living.
His book, Finding God at 50, isn’t written
like a typical religious book. It’s really more of a reflection on life: how
years go by, how responsibilities pile up, and how sometimes we move forward
without stopping to think about what we actually believe anymore.
That’s where Eli found himself.
Like a lot of people, he grew up around faith. Church was
familiar. Certain ideas about God were just part of the background of life. But
adulthood has a way of filling every corner of your schedule. Work, family,
bills, commitments: the usual things. Over time, faith wasn’t something he
rejected. It just slowly became something he didn’t think about very much.
Then life forced him to slow down.
A big part of that came during the time his mother became
seriously ill. Anyone who has sat in a hospital for hours waiting for news
knows how those moments feel. The world suddenly gets quiet in a strange way.
Things you normally ignore start sitting right in front of you.
In the book, Eli talks about that time honestly. The long
days at the hospital. The uncertainty around surgery. The conversations with
his father. Those kinds of moments have a way of staying with you long after
they’re over.
After his mother passed away, something shifted for him. Not
in a dramatic way. There wasn’t some big moment where everything suddenly made
sense.
It was quieter than that.
He started noticing small things again. Sitting with a cup
of coffee in the morning. Looking out the window and thinking about life in a
way he hadn’t for years. Realizing that maybe he had been moving too fast for a
long time.
And somewhere in those quiet moments, faith started showing
up again.
That’s really what Finding God at 50 is about.
It’s not a book full of neat answers or big religious statements. It feels more
like someone sharing the things life slowly taught them.
Eli writes about childhood memories, about adulthood, about
loss, and about the questions people often carry but don’t always say out loud.
The book also invites readers to pause a little themselves.
Throughout the chapters, there are small journaling prompts and simple prayers.
Nothing complicated, just moments meant to help people stop and think about
their own lives.
Because the truth is, many people eventually reach the same
place.
You start wondering what you really believe now. You think
about how life has changed you.
You begin asking questions you may have avoided for years.
Finding God at 50 doesn’t try to solve those
questions. It simply shares one man’s experience of what happened when he
finally started asking them. And sometimes that’s exactly where a deeper kind
of faith begins.
If this story resonates with you, Finding God at 50
by Eli Brackenbury is available now on Amazon.