Dear Old Friend,
I'm pretty sure that my letters to you will now primarily
chronicle this new journey I have embarked upon called retirement. This is actually week one of the “new normal”
because immediately after my last day of work I took a road trip to attend my
littlest grandson’s first birthday party which was exactly the kind of thing I
looked forward to being able to do once I was able to choose what to do with my
own time. So, now that I’m back I
decided today was the day to sit down and do some planning, some restructuring,
in keeping with my new life. I came
armed with a calendar for a schedule and my plans.
I had a plan for the daily upkeep of my house; a more
detailed plan for sorting through each room and each closet and drawer in each
room; a separate plan for attacking the laundry/storage room, which holds all
of the accumulated treasures/junk from several generations of my family; a plan
for writing; a plan for correspondence; a plan for handling finances; a plan
for adding to my finances; a plan for grocery shopping; a plan for cooking; a
plan for spending time with friends, which includes social media; a plan for
spending time with my husband and extended family; a plan for spending time
with God. The idea was to work out a
schedule which included time for all of that stuff, preferably making the
things at the end of that list the first things on my schedule.
Sheesh! I was
overwhelmed before I could start. Every
one of those things is important to me, but seeing them laid out before me as
the expectations I had for myself, I immediately felt inadequate and
demotivated. Why? Because they stopped
being the things I could hardly wait to do and became The Law of Retirement.
So, sitting at my dining room table with all of my good
intentions spread out in front of me, I pondered my abrupt change of
attitude. The first question I asked
myself was why I felt the need to make all those plans and put them on a
schedule to begin with. I had some
logical reasons. I wanted to be organized,
not haphazard. I thought I needed an
overview of all I wanted to accomplish in order to prioritize and allow time
for each of them. In theory, my plan was
to ensure that I would be able to do the fun things as well as the not so
enjoyable things. But, in reality, I
discovered that lurking beneath my logic was my need to justify my decision to
considerably reduce our income by becoming a stay-at-home retiree; which I recognized
immediately as being amazingly similar to my need from decades earlier to
justify being a stay-at-home mom.
In our ‘you-are-what-you-do’ society, retirees don’t count
for much. The first question I got every
time I told anyone that I was going to retire was, “What are you going to
do?” At least people know what stay-at-home-moms
are going to do, even if some people absurdly view it as a menial unpaid
position. But, what purpose do retirees
serve? What gives our lives value? We are supposed to have an answer ready which
proves our worth and I was determined to have a schedule full!
That line of thinking also seemed an awful lot like the Christianity
I grew up with: Christians expecting
other Christians to justify their existence.
‘Your salvation cost Jesus his life, so what are you going to do in
return?’ was the question, and we were supposed to have a ready answer to prove
that we were not just freeloading off of Jesus’ grace. I labored under that burden far too long
until, blessedly, I learned that I already had all of the justification I
needed in Christ, and that he never asked for or expected me to pay him back
for his free gift. He simply wanted me
to live from the position of joy and relief at not having to fulfill some Law
of Reimbursement. And, the clearer and
more real that became to me, the freer I was to share that good news with
others and to do the things I actually wanted to do.
This brought me back to my Law of Retirement which, as laws
always do, was accusing me before I even got started, placing me under its
rules and obligations, making me its slave; at least that’s how I felt. So, I
decided to apply my freedom in Christ in this situation, too. I am not going to labor under the burden of
trying to prove my worth or justify my existence, and I am pretty sure that the
clearer and more real that becomes to me the freer I am going to feel to dive
into everything I was going to do all along.
I feel better already!
Love Always,
Bonnie
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