What God Wants For Your Life

Life marches on.  There’s no denying it.  Anyone with a mirror can attest to it.

And, contrary to the saccharin notions promoted by motivational speakers, you can’t out run it, asserting mind over matter.

But you can accelerate the process by acting old and thinking old.  Some people manage to do it while they are still young.  People who are chronologically older often deepen the malaise, dwelling on their aches and pains or by sharing internet accounts of how hard it is to be old.  One that has been going around of late has been one called “Suddenly it’s winter.”

To some degree this kind of preoccupation is simply an extension of the narcissism that dominated our youth.  The only thing that has changed is the subject matter.  We were once preoccupied with our plans.  Now we are preoccupied with our pains.

Some of it is the luxury of living in a world with too much time and not enough investment in the lives of others (which, by the way, feeds the narcissism).

And some of it is the ragged adjustment to aging that all of us experience.

But a preoccupation with life’s limits is a poor place to live.

To avoid it:

Claim the value of what you have learned.

Stay invested and involved in life and in others.

Live life, don’t rehearse your limitations.

It’s an important spiritual discipline.  Our lives are a gift — at any age and using the gift to its fullest is part and parcel of being fully present to God.

According to one Wall Street Journal reporter, a recent scientific journal published in Europe concluded that 93% of the world’s population is completely predictable — evidently in every way imaginable.

If you are into herd-mentality, that’s comforting. There’s a lot of company to be had in 93% of the earth’s population. But that statistic is not particularly comforting if you were hoping to make your mark on the world.

The good news is, it shouldn’t be hard to do.

Novelty for novelty’s sake, however, has no more going for it than herd behavior.

So, how do we break out to do something fresh that is also marked by integrity?

Don’t sell out to the structures.

Find the time and space to listen to God’s voice.

Trust your gifts.

Don’t be afraid to fail.

And remember, being a part of the 7% isn’t about standing out for the sake of standing out, or even about big, noticeable deeds. It’s about listening to God’s call on your life instead of mimicking what 93 other people are doing just because they are doing it.

Retirement is only another chapter in the pilgrimage of life if you view it as the next chapter in your story.

It is legitimate and even healthy to grieve what you are leaving behind in retirement. It is even healthier to review the chapters you are closing with gratitude, laughter, and grace.

But retirement, as one of my friends puts it, is less about deciding what it is you are retiring from, than it is a matter of deciding what you are retiring to.

In making that decision, in opening the next chapter, retirement becomes a pilgrimage of faith and hope. Faith that God will open new doors, enrich your life, and deepen your wisdom. Hope that what you are retiring to will be filled with the same kind of joy that was there at each of the earlier stages in your life.

Many of the struggles people encounter in retirement lie with their vision of the experience. Some think of it entirely in terms of loss. Some think of it as a vacant lot, a place where people are parked for a time, having lived otherwise useful existences. Others enter retirement armed to the teeth with their minds filled with defensive provisions for the financial and physical well-being. And some think of it as golf.

To see it as another chapter in our pilgrimage along side God is to place it in context. We have walked through radically different chapters in our lives. The ones behind us are nothing like the one we experienced immediately before retiring. It is time to trust and to hope — for something new.

An increasing number of my friends who are retiring are confessing to what the Germans describe as Schadefreude —- a compound word, meaning shame-joy. Shame at passing quietly into the ranks of retirement without admitting that the systems within which they have been working are broken and have been broken for quite some time — Joy at having managed to avoid the fate of those who will suffer for the brokenness.

Not all Schadefreude can be avoided. A tragic accident happens, claiming the lives of some and not others? The survivors will suffer Schadefreude. They are joyful at having survived; ashamed to be joyful at having survived something that claimed the lives of others.

But the kind of Schadefreude that some of my friends are suffering now as they retire is more complex. Could they have named the brokenness? Could they have cared for the younger victims of the brokenness? Could they — even now — disturb the comfort of retirement in order to announce that the system is broken?

There are no easy answers. There is no strategy that can be guaranteed to work. Not everyone who retires from a broken system is required to play the same role. Some are called to shout about the brokenness from the rooftops. Some are called upon to run an underground railroad caring for those who are bruised by the system behind closed doors.

What is clear is that retirement is not about passing off the scene and collecting — with a sigh of guilty relief — the last crumbs falling from a broken institution. There are still things to be done the day after one quits forever.

Retirement is the opportunity to practice humility and wisdom.

An opportunity to trust God with the future.

An opportunity to mentor another generation.

Far too many people retire with no attention to these opportunities. “I’ve done my bit. It’s time to collect,” tends to be the implicit logic that many take to their retirement.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying the provisions you have made for the future.

There is something wrong with treating life as something to be plundered.

Part of the problem that we face nationally is that we are at the end of the third generation that has neglected the notion legacy. The result? Millions of stories that end in a chapter entitled “me,” rather than millions of contributions to a story about “us.”

There is something rich, wonderful, necessary, and enduring about the joining of hands across generations that takes seriously the notion of legacy and the responsibility that goes along with it. It is a story that ends with “us.”

Retirement is one of the most significant changes in the adult pilgrimage. Far too many people experience it as loss, rather than the next chapter in life’s adventure.

In part, this is due to the inevitable grieving that accompanies any major change, even those that are positive. Every time we close the door on one life chapter and open another, there are things we leave behind. And if those experiences have been positive then, by definition, we feel a certain measure of loss.

Retirement is a door that closes on not just one chapter, but a series of chapters devoted to building a life’s endeavor, a home, a family, and the friendships that accompany that part of the pilgrimage. So, there is a great deal that we lose.

But the spiritual challenge in retirement is also daunting because we live in a culture that emphasizes “doing.” Because it does, retirement can threaten to foreclose on our sense of self-worth, undermine our sense of independence, and even raise questions for us about “who we are.”

When that happens retirement can be a killer — literally.

At the heart of that experience are spiritual challenges that can turn the killer into an opportunity for fresh spiritual growth. In the next day or two, I want to outline some of those opportunities.