Living with Purpose After Your Primary Career

Truth be told, I’ve had real difficulty writing this blog post. In fact, even though I’m a procrastinator by nature and always push a deadline, I had to ask for an extension on this one.

I’m just over one year into my own retirement and finding meaning and living with purpose are two most-present companions in these days. It seems I’ve lived a busy life and returning to that pattern seemed logical. But retirement brings some new parameters. And, I think, retirement requires preparation.

Moving Toward vs. Leaving Behind

I’ve always sought to leave a position well; it doesn’t always work that way, but it’s what I hope for. As I approached my retirement date last spring, I worked hard to both speak and do the things that honored a time of deeply meaningful and hard work serving God’s church. And, I shared my sense of a new calling; a call back into my family, a call into a time of spaciousness, a time of travel and new adventure. It was important to me to be able to profess what I was moving toward rather than only what I was leaving behind. Not because I often asked that question of others when they sought my counsel in my job, but because I felt knowing what I was looking forward to and anticipating was essential to retiring well.

Retiring from work in ministry is tricky. Pastors spend their time in relationship with others, we walk with people in joy and sorrow, we hear things we must keep confidential, we connect deeply over spiritually moving conversations and events, and folks consider us their friends. But, when we leave a place, especially in retirement, especially when we don’t plan to move away, we are called into a time of holding painful and challenging boundaries…unless we are well-prepared.

Preparing for the Next Season

So, I tried to prepare and to model how I might get ready for this new season. How to, perhaps, find meaning in the next season of serving God when the rhythm of caring for others and teaching (always teaching) and being present is no longer binding the edges of life.

A friend recently shared this quote from Jeff Hanaan’s article, A Biblical Perspective on Retirement with me. The article names retirement as a time of: “rest and interior renewal to heal from past wounds and re-orient the heart toward trust, worship, and justice.” This resonates. The article names the early span of retirement as a time of sabbatical, a theological term for time that affords rest and reflection and reorientation. In retrospect, this is what I found myself doing in the time leading up to retirement and in this first year. I was on sabbatical.

Very intentionally, I told folks that I was not going to take on anything new for six months after retiring. In large part, I accomplished this, making just one exception in joining a handbell choir—something I had to mostly give up while serving congregations. This brings me pleasure every week in a new group of friends and in working together to make music. Before I retired, I reconnected with friends not connected to my work, I looked for ways to distance from ongoing and future commitments, I began to say good-bye. Afterward–I didn’t preach. I was in contact only rarely with former colleagues and even less so with members of churches I served. I traveled. I spent time with my grandchildren. I lived without feeling like my hair was on fire. It took some time, but I’ve recovered a more regular day-to-day time of devotion. When I need to go to an appointment, I no longer have the sense that I have to rush in order to be on time. There is ease in my days.

Sixteen months into retirement I’ve begun to consider some new opportunities and to take on a couple of things that relate to the ministry I left. I’ve been trained to volunteer in an organization important to my family. I continue to joyfully ring bells. I have preached…three weeks in a row! I’ll provide leadership in a boundary training for clergy.

Purpose is Not Equal to Productivity

Life is a bit of mix and this is a season of reminding myself that purpose is not equal to productivity. I can have purpose in a life that gives space for quiet, reading, music, and knitting—and even for deleting the backlog of promotional emails that fill up the Google storage.

Recently, in a time of devotion I picked up a small book that has held so much inspiration for me lately, John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us. The subtitle invites readers to enter a “Book of Blessings.” Indeed. In “For Retirement” O’Donohue writes:

This is where your life has arrived,
After all the years of effort and toil;
Look back with graciousness and thanks
On all your great and quiet achievements.

You stand on the shore of new invitation
To open your life to what is left undone;
Let your heart enjoy a different rhythm
When drawn to the wonder of other horizons.

Have the courage for a new approach to time;
Allow it to slow until you find freedom
To draw alongside the mystery you hold
And befriend your own beauty of soul.

Now is the time to enjoy your heart’s desire,
To live the dreams you’ve waited for,
To awaken the depths beyond your work
And enter into your infinite source.

Infinite source, source of all meaning and purpose. May we remember. May it be so.

To learn more about options for post-retirement success and how to begin preparing even prior to finishing your primary career, join us in person or online for the 2024 Abundant Aging Symposium, Purpose, Meaning and Redefining Retirement on October 4^th. Discount for those over the age of 55 and for students.

For Reflection (either individually or with a group)

Read the blog. Read it a second time, maybe reading it aloud or asking someone else to read it aloud so you can hear it with different intonation and emphases. Invite the Divine to open your heart to allow the light of new understanding to pierce the shadows of embedded assumptions, stereotypes, and ways of thinking so that you may live more abundantly. Then spend some time with the following questions together with anything or anyone who helps you reflect more deeply.

• When you retire, what will you be moving toward vs.what will you be leaving behind?
• If you have not yet retired from your primary career, what if anything are you doing now to prepare for that future chapter of your life?
• John O’Donohue writes, “Look back with graciousness and thanks on all your great and quiet achievements.” Name a few of your great and quiet achievements and say why you are thankful for them.
• What is your heart’s desire for your retirement? Do you have a dream you have been waiting for?

Download a pdf including the Reflection Questions to share and discuss with friends, family, or members of your faith community small group.