Retirement Seems To Be Working

The words in I Corinthians 13 remind us that when we are children, we speak like children, we understand like children, and we think like children.

During this last month, I’ve become a retiree. That means that I am learning to speak, understand and think like someone in a new and untested stage of life.

In my retirement, I’ve been reading the New York Times bestseller “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” When author Marie Kondo mentions the word “tidying,” I think of the word “purging.” As I look around my home of 38 years, I see so many items that could easily find themselves at a St. Vincent de Paul drop-off site.

When I look at my spirit, there are even more places that need to be tidied or purged. Most notably, there are pockets of anger and jealousy and unforgiveness lurking in my soul.

Marie Kondo believes that less is really more when it comes to homes. Empty out and don’t replace, she suggests.

Our souls are different. If we empty out, we need to put something back in. We need to put in something wonderful like the Fruit of the Spirit. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.

Now that I am retired, my life is wildly different. I am realizing that that’s okay, thanks to the comforting words from Ecclesiastes 3: “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens.”

I think there is grace, given to us by God our Father, for every season of our lives. I watch my daughter and daughter-in-law with their young children, and see how they are filled with love and joy, patience and kindness.

It seems reasonable to believe that God gives special graces to retirees as they back away from the pressures and the difficulties of the workforce, and move into simpler, quieter days.

In these last few weeks, I have been asked by women who are my age how my retirement is going. They confide to me that they are terrified of it, questioning how they would fill their days after losing the structure offered by their jobs.

I tell them that retirement is like standing at the edge of a body of water. You want to dive in but you don’t know what you will find. Snakes? Seaweed? Murky water?

I dove in and have found refreshment and peace and joy.

If I had known it was this wonderful, I would have retired 30 years ago! 

Mary Ann retired as the managing editor of The Message in December 2015.