Reflections on Retirement

After One Year

I officially retired on July 1, 2022. It has been one year. As I have been pondering life over the past twelve months and as I look to the future, I offer the following reflections.

While there is no easy formula for figuring out when to retire, one should attempt to retire at the right time—that is, not too early or too late. Over the years, I have told friends that when I retire, I wanted to go out like Jim Brown and not Brett Favre (let the sports fan understand), but know that is not necessarily easy. I never set a hard and fast date to retire, so when I decided to retire a year and a half ago at age 60, it was not planned. I had retired friends warn me about retiring too early suggesting I might be bored with nothing to do. Other have cautioned about retiring too late, not being able to enjoy my later years of traveling and other joys.

What I have discovered is that after a year, I believe I retired when the time was right for me. I left pastoral ministry feeling that thirty-eight years was enough time to do what I was called to do. I did not retire dejected and beaten down like some of my pastoral colleagues, but grateful for the time I had. It has been a great run and I would do it all over again, but in November of 2021 I had a biblical sense of “the time has been fulfilled.”

It is not only important to be financially prepared for retirement, but one must be chronologically prepared. Every day there are approximately sixteen hours of awakening time to fill. Time flies when we are busy, but it moves in snail-like fashion when we are bored. Years ago, I stated thinking about how to fill my time in retirement. For me, knowing what I was going to do was not difficult to figure out. I’ve always had my fingers in many things throughout my adult life. In retirement, I have the time to pursue those things in a fuller way.

Sadly, I have known people who quickly found themselves bored after they left their employment. They never did much of anything other than work. Now, they don’t have much of anything to do. Fortunately, there is plenty to do with our days if we plan for it. There are hobbies and various endeavors in which to pass the time. I have retired friends who have taken up painting, woodworking, and cross stitch. Some of them have created a side business to supplement their retirement income. (I teach as an adjunct professor.) One of the great things about retirement is that there is now time to do things that could only be squeezed in the daily schedule around work. I spend my days reading, writing, blogging, podcasting, gardening, and cooking among other things. The sixteen awakening hours of my day go fast.

Be generous with your time. In the past year, I have done pulpit supply and preached on Sunday for pastors who are on vacation, or on medical or maternity leave. I have stepped in for a brief interim period for a few weeks to preach and offer emergency pastoral care when needed. I am mentoring several younger clergy on a regular basis, which is a way of showing gratitude to the older clergy who mentored me in my younger days. Retirement is also a time for me to sit in the pew on Sunday morning and serve the church from that vantage point and support the person who is now my pastor. I have retired friends who volunteer time at the hospital, free clinics, the Salvation Army, and other places. Retirement provides an opportunity to give in service to others. I have gotten to the age where time is more important than money. Social Security and my pension will outlive me. Human life has an expiration date. Not one of us will get out of life alive. Make time for what is most important.

It should go without saying that retirement is a time for family. Be intentional about spending time with loved ones. We have four young granddaughters. I now have an opportunity to leave a legacy of my presence to them. I hope I have developed the kind of wisdom that comes only from age that I can pass on to them through my words, deeds, and most of all just by being there for them.

Continue to be connected to friends and the world. Studies have shown that the most important key to longevity and vitality in old age is relationship. As Trinitarians, Christians believe that God is inherently relational. We were created to be with one another. Retirement allows for time to foster relationships as never before. So, we must take the time to do that for which we were created; and for me it’s coffee and conversation.

Travel because the world is a wonderful place. I know there are people who dislike traveling and if you’re a person who has no interest in seeing the world or other places in America, it is retirement after all. It is a time to do what you want. But my travels around the world have opened me up to the largeness and the beauty of different lands, different people, different customs, and different foods. It is true that travel broadens our world. It broadens our views. Once we get to know people from other places, it becomes difficult to stereotype, generalize, and dismiss them by their ethnicity, culture, and values. Retirement is the time to enlarge the world around us.

Be financially generous. To be generous financially is a relative term. Some will have more funds at their disposal than others in their post laboring years, but retirement affords us the opportunity to be generous with our money in ways that we were unable before. With kids out of the house the grocery budget shrinks. The house is closer to being paid off. College tuition is a thing of the past. We now can give to causes that matter to us in a way we couldn’t in earlier years. It is also good to be generous in the little things—tip more generously or surprise someone with a gift card for no reason. I firmly believe that the happiest people are those who live in gratitude, and those who live in gratitude are generous. What generosity looks like for me will look different for another retired person, but it is now a time to reflect the generosity of God in what we give to others.

Over time, give yourself permission to slow down. I am on the front end of my retirement days and I am busy most days. In fact, it seems I am busier than I was when I was working; although I will say there’s a leisurely character to my busyness that I did not know in my working years. There is no doubt that if I live long enough, I will begin to slow down. I can feel in some ways that I’ve slowed down already. At sixty-one years of age, I do not have the same amount of energy that I did at forty-one or fifty-one. We need to give ourselves permission over time to age and that means to slow down. I am currently teaching as an adjunct professor. There will come a time to give that up. I have found in my first year of retirement that I am writing a lot, but I suspect that in future years that the volume of pages I produce will diminish. I plan to do most of my travels within the next ten to fifteen years (if I have the health) because I know at one point travel will become too difficult for my aging body. Instead of mourning those times when they come, we need to give ourselves permission to be older, to slow down, and to enjoy a quieter way of life . Psalm 90 states, “our years of life are seventy, eighty if we have strength.” If I manage to live into my eighties and beyond, it will not be the time to mourn the loss of my youth, but to be thankful for the days that I continue to see.

If you are religious, don’t let the busyness of retirement get in the way of your relationship with God and God’s people. Just as age has brought a maturity to us that we did not have in our younger years, so too our relationship with God over the years has matured as well. What a blessing it is to have the time to foster and to deepen that relationship with the One who made and redeemed us. Do not allow the leisure of retirement to get into the way of that relationship and shortchange our prayer, study, service, and corporate worship.

The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time for everything. We don’t so much have to make time for God, but rather we need to realize that God is in all our times. As God has been my dwelling place throughout my working life, so now he is my dwelling place in this new adventure of retirement; and however long my retirement years are, I hope in all circumstances that I live in gratitude, joy, and generosity.