What I Didn't Know About Retirement

 

What I Didn’t Know About Retirement

Theology in the Trenches

By Kathleen Kjolhaug

 

The conversation wasn’t really one at all. Rather, it was a single question posed. “Why do you read with your lips, whispering the words each time you read?”

Fair enough it was to ask, but my reply was a surprise even to me. “I didn’t know I did!”

Although I’ve been “retired” for a few years now, I’ve been patiently waiting for my husband to catch up in hopes we’d ride off into the sunset alongside one another during this quieter phase of our lives. Apparently, I wasn’t being very quiet.

Since we’ve moved, we thought it might be fun to talk, read, sit, and gear down while enjoying the peacefulness of life where we now live. Thus, technology has been kept to a minimal. And it’s been working quite well—at least the gearing down part because every time I look over at him in the evenings as we pine away the hours in the pines, his head is tilted back, his eyes are closed and the noises coming from his lips aren’t exactly whispering words. You will be the first to know, he’s not being very quiet either.

However, a few weeks later—after giving lip service to my read aloud style, he spoke up once again making me even more aware that things are changing or have changed and will continue to do just that. The conversation went something like this.

“Where would you like me to place these perennials?” he asked. I’d purchased many.

As we hunted for a spot to plant the plants, we were hoping to tuck them into areas for safe keeping so as not to be nibbled down by the forest creatures at large. While in the midst of finding just the right spot, he pointed out a beautiful White Pine beginning to take root.

“Don’t plant anything too close to that because I love those trees, and this one will be a beauty as it grows,” said I.

His view of the situation was short but didn’t sound all that sweet. “Well, we won’t even be alive when that thing is big.”

Change is eminent, I suppose, but I’m more like a perennial—wanting things to bloom again and again. At the end of the day, we planted the flowers not, too, near the tree. As for me—well—I’ve tried to tone down the whispering as I read and he’s trying to stay awake to hear all about the details of what I read.

Genesis 8:22 encourages, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”  And so, it goes. May that which we plant bear much fruit. May the roots go deep and may that which is planted touch many a generation who will come after. And mostly, may they follow after You, Jesus. In Your name we pray.  Amen.