Things I Have Learned in Retirement

Several friends and acquaintances have recently retired or are in the final stages of entering retirement. As I have heard their plans, it has caused me to reflect on my own retirement of almost twelve years ago. I looked up the word retirement in the dictionary and found the first definition was "to leave one's job, occupation, or career permanently." That is probably what most people mean when they say they are retiring. They are planning to no longer get up early, head to work by 7:00 or 8:00 and head back home around 5:00. That schedule change sounds good until you begin to consider what you will do with all that free time. Will golfing, fishing, reading, traveling, and napping keep a person satisfied for five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or more years of retirement?

There is a verse in Jeremiah 29:11 that I didn't fully grasp its significance until after my own retirement.

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans

for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

In retirement, I discovered that some of my plans coincided with God's plans. At other times I thought that I had retired from all the things related to my career as a minister only to find out that God had plans that won out over my plans.

My plans for retirement were fairly simple and in line with the typical retirement plans of many people. First, my wife and I were both retired. We planned to do a lot of traveling, visiting family and friends, and just being together. We enjoy being together and doing things together so that part has worked well. Regarding the traveling idea, we have traveled some but we also found that travel can be more expensive than the retirement budget allows.

Second, I planned to renew some hobbies like golf, painting, and reading. After a career that involved the reading of many professional and practical books, I have found that I like the escape relaxation that I find reading fiction of the mystery genre. I have resumed landscape painting that I did early in life. As for the golf, a back surgery and a hip replacement created an unexpected limitation to my pitiful golf game.

While I thought that doing in retirement what I had done as a career would not be what I wanted to do, God had other plans. In the first ten years of retirement, five of those were spent serving as an interim pastor in three different churches. In addition, probably another year of Sundays was spent as a supply preacher. The truth is that while these opportunities took up a great deal of retirement time, they were enjoyable and meaningful times for me.

As my wife and I both aged some, we decided that we needed to move closer to family. While neither set of our parents had done that, we felt that it would be beneficial for us and make life easier for our family. We chose to move to Colorado near our daughter and her family rather than moving farther south in Texas to where our son and his family lived (temperature was the deciding factor - when it is 115 in Texas in the summer, we are sweltering under the 85 degree heat wave of Colorado.) This was really one of God's plans because I am a native Texan and until three years ago, I had never lived outside of Texas.

With the move to Colorado, I was sure that I was truly retired now from my career. What I discovered is that we don't really retire from what God wants to do through our lives. I began this blog in January 2024 because I needed an outlet to express various thoughts and understandings of life that God keeps revealing and teaching me. Then in the summer of 2024, one of the ministers at our church asked me to teach the Pastor's Bible Study on Wednesday nights while our church began its search for a new senior pastor (ours had moved out of state to serve at another church after eight years as our church's pastor). While getting into the habit of weekly study on a level required to teach others has been a challenge at times, I have to admit that I both enjoy and am blessed through this responsibility.

Besides writing some autobiographical material, you may be asking, "what is the point?"

The point is this - retirement is not just about what you or me want to do. Retirement is still about following God's plans in our lives. At times, He gives us occasions of relaxation and the opportunity to explore new areas of life. At other times, He surprises us with a move or a health issue that were not in our plans. And sometimes He reminds us that what He has gifted us with and equipped us for is not ended when we announce to our employer that we are retiring.

Moses was eighty years old when God surprised him with the assignment to go to Egypt to lead the Israelites out of slavery and take them to a new land. But remember when you go back to Exodus and read the accounts of Moses, God had spent eighty years getting Moses ready for this assignment. God has spent all of our lives equipping us for life before retirement and life after retirement.

Retirement is just a term that means your daily life may change, but you are still the person that God has plans for and will use you in some unexpected ways. I hope your retirement is great and filled with new and exciting challenges that God places before you.