I remember the first time I fantasized about retirement.
I was in my early 40s, and the church I served was thriving. In the 5 years I’d been there, we’d grown from around 900 to over 2000 in worship each Sunday. My choir loft had over 100 people crowding it each Sunday, plus an orchestra of around 15 to 20 more. Our worship ministry was featured regionally on a weekly tv broadcast, and stood out because we were a Baptist church where worship was truly passionate. I was soon receiving job offers from churches all around the southeast.
Funny thing was that even after all I’ve just bragged about, I still wasn’t that happy. I’d tied my self worth not to who I was (Child of God, husband, father) but what I did (worship pastor). But the work I was pouring myself into wasn’t making me happy. Men commonly make that mistake. We put all our chips on our career, trying desperately to prove our worth with it, only to realize it never had the ability to fulfill us in the first place. So I did what you do when one extremely successful church doesn’t satisfy you – I went to another one, thinking the new scenery would do the trick.
You can probably guess where that eventually ended up.
In the midst of my successful, miserable life, I remember fantasizing about retirement for the first time. I imagined the cabin in the Smokies, high up on a mountain, where no one would find me unless they knew where to look. There, with only my wife and family, I would write my music, my plays, and my books to my heart’s content. I wouldn’t have to go into work, and wouldn’t have to deal with people. The only expectations on me would be those that I put on myself. It seemed ideal.
Only problem with my fantasy was it was built on a mirage; a lie, in fact. And here’s the lie: if we could only do just what we wanted to do (or what we THINK we wanted to do), we would finally be happy.
As I continued to chase down churches I thought would make me happy, we spent almost 15 years of and on again in Naples, FL. That place was so close to what people consider “paradise” that it was even advertised as “The Paradise Coast”. People retired there in droves, drawn by all the “top places to retire” lists in AARP magazines. A huge list of wealthy entertainers and business executives spent their winters there. The rest of the hoi polloi found less expensive bungalows there, and made their weekly trips to the local Costco to stock up.
Emblazoned on the back of their cars was often this bumper sticker: “Spending my Kids’ Inheritance”. The sad part I noticed was they very rarely got to spend much of it. That’s because many of the men I knew, who had formerly been the heads of great companies, rarely found much purpose in their daily golf games and evenings spent exploring the buffet at the newest restaurant in town. Often within just two years of retiring, several of these men I knew suddenly dropped dead.
While I’m not a medical professional, most of them seemed to be keeping active and living healthy. So I couldn’t help but think that devoid of any great purpose or grand “quest” left in their lives, these titans of industry and business warriors died because they had nothing much to live for. I can’t know that for sure, but I can say few of them seemed to be truly fulfilled even though they were “living the good life in paradise”.
These men had done in business basically what I had done in ministry: they’d reached a pinnacle of success but found it didn’t offer the dividends they expected. So they assumed those dividends must exist in that magical land called “retirement”. But to their surprise, the absence of a good reason to get up in the morning was their kryptonite. When they no longer had a job to perform, they were no longer needed. And since they’d ignored their family for most of those career years, their families had learned to survive without them.
For a man, not to be needed is a devastating, even terminal thing.
While our culture has made much about us all being “more than just our jobs”, we often forget that every man needs a great epic story to live. As writers like John Eldridge have noted in multiple books, each man desires and actually needs a great battle to fight. Without that great calling, most men will die quickly, at least in spirit and often times physically as well. While I can’t speak for women, I am convinced that each man needs something greater than himself to live for. And that’s not our jobs, though we usually assume it is at first.
But the happiest retirees I knew in Florida were the ones who had traded one quest in for another. They had retired from their job, but not from their mission in life. Each of them found something often even more important to live for than the job they had previously held.
For many this was volunteering. When I served as a chaplain in the county jail, I saw the huge impact retirees had on the jail population, These seniors were using their vast experience to mentor men and women behind bars. They led in weekly Bible studies, and lay people often led entire worship services behind bars. They mixed practical advice from their experience in the business world with Biblical advice for how to live for Jesus. And many of these retirees were responsible for prisoners completely turning around their lives.
One lady in particular, named Ann Rowan, amazed me. She was in her late 80s when I met her, was maybe 5 feet tall (including her hair), and sported a rather thick Boston/New England accent. Without fail, Ann lead a weekly Bible study for women in our jail. It was clear the ladies loved Ann and knew that she loved them. Ann and I became close friends, even though she was a Catholic and I was a Baptist pastor. She received push back from officers at times, because some of them perceived Bible studies as “giving aid to their enemies” or coddling the prisoners. So I had to go to bat for her often.
One day as she sat in my office, she revealed the real reason why she came to the jail each Tuesday. Years ago, her only daughter was savagely murdered by another woman with whom she had a romantic relationship. It was as traumatic an experience for Ann as you can imagine, but God started speaking to Ann in the midst of her grief. What He told her to do was so extreme, Ann resisted it at first. But after several months of struggle, and made the trip to the prison where her daughter’s murderer now was held. She made an appointment to me the woman, though the woman had no idea who she was. And at that first meeting, sitting on the other side of a plexiglass wall from this murderer, Ann told her something she couldn’t believe at first.
She told this murderer that she forgave her for killing her daughter. Actually, Ann could hardly believe the words either as they escaped her lips.
After that first meeting, Ann started going to the jail every chance she got to pray with her daughter’s murderer. She heard from her that other ladies in her cell block would love to meet Ann. That’s when she got the idea of starting a Bible study in the prison. As she ministered to those ladies, God did a work of redemption in their lives while simultaneously healing Ann’s heart.
When Ann saw the amazing things God was doing, she became addicted. She wanted that feeling of helping change someone’s life to keep happening over and over again. So she kept coming to the jail, even after her daughter’s murderer was moved to another facility. When I was there, she won countless numbers of prisoners to Christ, at a time in her life when other women were playing bridge or just sitting at home. Finally after moving away, I received word Ann had passed away. But what she did in those last 10 years of her life impacted eternity more than anything she’d done in the first 80.
As a pastor in Florida, I saw Ann’s scenario play out over and over again. People who had lost their significance when one job had ended now found new significance doing more to change the World in their last decade than they’d ever done before. Their latter years were truly greater than their past. They didn’t burn out at the end, they flamed out and ignited new fires in those they cared for.
They realized like Caleb in the book of Joshua that old age is not a time to sit back, especially if you still had any health and mobility left. God expects us to do what Caleb did. Instead of asking for cushy pieces of lowland property in the Promised Land, Caleb pointed high and said, “Give me this mountain!” The mountains were particularly hard to capture, because the enemy forces within them had the high ground and the advantage in warfare.
But Caleb knew something about himself that too many retirees miss. He knew that he alone had the experience now from years of battles to efficiently and effectively capture those high places. He also knew that the years that taught him not to whine and complain when things didn’t immediately go his way. While other people grew brittle and bitter with age, Caleb just grew tougher. Minor discouragement and failure no longer deterred him. He had learned to just put his head down and keep marching up the hill until he had captured it.
With the baby boom generation settling in to retirement at this moment, we have the greatest fighting force for good in our nation’s history. But we need to avoid the mirage that’s selling us the lie of retirement as a paradise of inactivity. We need something to live for in our last 10 or 20 years, or else we’ll die long before we are really dead. God is ready to do greater things through us now, because now we have the experience, the knowledge, and the toughness to do more than ever.
But we have to stop asking God for a calm sandy beach. Calm is for graveyards. Instead, give me a mountain to conquer, and then I’ll truly have a reason to live!
God bless you, Ann Rowan! Miss you, my friend – Dave
