Finding Your Purpose When You Retire: What Comes Next In Your Life? A Guided Journal

Finding Your Purpose When You Retire

What Comes Next In Your Life? A Guided Journal

L. Richard Bradley, PH.D.

Copyright © 2024 L. Richard Bradley, PH.D.

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-88960-956-8 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-967-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to my long-time friend, Dr. Bill Billinghurst, who encouraged me and read many drafts as I wrote. He made many helpful comments and suggestions, the most important of which was the wording that makes my book more inclusive and accessible to people from a wide range of religious traditions as well as those who live their lives without reference to any tradition.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Where Am I Now and How Did I Get Here?

The Unfolding Tapestry of My Life: 1993

The Unfolding Tapestry of My Life Exercise

Revisiting Your Own Life Story

Bibliography

Chapter 2

Exploring the Chapters of Life

The Purposeful Journey

The First Chapter of Life

The Second Chapter of Life

The Third Chapter of Life: Roughly Ages Fifty to Seventy-Five Plus

Reflection Questions on Relationships between Faith and Aging

Bibliography

Chapter 3

Transitions: Endings, Holy Ground, and New Beginnings

What Transition or Transformation Is About

Issues That Might Open the Door to Transition

The Process of Transition

Transitions: Starting Over Again Questions

The Neutral Zone: Holy Ground or Empty Space

New Beginnings

Conclusion

Bibliography

Chapter 4

Finding Your Future

Bibliography

Chapter 5

The View from the Edge

Thinking about Retirement in a New Way

Creating a New Model (Your Own Model) for Retirement

Are You Ready to Retire? Questions for Reflection

Suggestion: Before moving on to the next section, you might find it helpful to have your Life Tapestry handy as you reflect on the following questions and write down your responses to each one.

Aging Is about Change

Learning to Listen to Our Life

Finding Your Leading/God's Plan/Purpose for Your Life

Creating a Legacy

Bibliography

Chapter 6

Putting All This into Action

Developing a Personal Purpose Statement

Being an Elder

Being a Boundary-Crosser

Putting Your Personal Purpose Statement into Action Using Backwards Design

Are You Following Your Leading?

What Keeps Us from Following Our Leading?

Conclusion: Stepping Out in Faith

What Happens When Our Plan Is Interrupted?

Final Reflections

Bibliography

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my long-time friend, Dr. Bill Billinghurst, who encouraged me and read many drafts as I wrote. He made many helpful comments and suggestions, the most important of which was the wording that makes my book more inclusive and accessible to people from a wide range of religious traditions as well as those who live their lives without reference to any tradition.

Acknowledgments

This book represents years of work and the encouragement and support from many different people with whom I have crossed paths.

Dr. Robert Rogers—I first met Dr. Rogers in the summer of 1997. I had heard about a course he taught at The Ohio State University on developmental learning theory. It sounded interesting to me, so I made an appointment to meet with him at his office. I went into our meeting with the intent of signing up to audit this class. An hour later, I came out and enrolled in a PhD with him as my adviser. Later, he chaired my dissertation committee. He challenged me intellectually and stretched me in ways I never thought possible and constantly encouraged me to go beyond what I thought were my limits.

Dr. James Fowler (then at Emory University)—Jim developed and introduced me to the theory of faith development, which he developed while at Harvard. He became an unofficial member of my dissertation committee and allowed me to tinker with the interview format he had developed on the condition that I would share my new tools with him and results of my work.

Dr. Richard Wing, Senior Minister of First Community Church in Marble Cliff, Ohio—In January of 2012, I sat in his office to talk about some things that were keeping me awake at night. These had to do with health issues, financial concerns, and what I would do with myself after retirement. He knew I liked to journal, so he suggested developing questions based on my concerns and that I could fine-tune my questions with members of the Men's Breakfast Group at First Community Church (which I did). More on this later.

Dr. Ken Stokes, Dr. Nancy Foltz, and Dr. Gwen Hawley—members of a team that along with me taught a program called Mapping the Adult Faith Journey. These four-day workshops were intended to help clergy persons from all faith traditions, educators, and professional counselors better understand and help adults with whom they worked. These workshops served as a model for much of the work I have done over the last twenty years and, to a degree, to the journaling format of this book.

Dr. William Adrian—a psychologist with whom I worked from 1998 to 2001 and helped me through a very difficult time in my life. From him, I learned what it means to balance challenge with support.

Finally and most important of all—my wife, Patty, who has been my companion since this journey began. She offered gentle but firm encouragement when I was tempted to give up on writing this book and has proofread each and every page of this book and offered helpful suggestions frequently. Without her encouragement and eyes, this book might still be a dream.

Introduction

The genesis of this journey began in January 2012 when I found myself confronted by three questions I had not seriously had to face before. The first had to do with health-related issues. My sixty-nine-year-old body just didn't feel right. After some gentle prodding from my wife, I made an appointment with my doctor. After a series of tests, he concluded that I was just under stress from other issues with which I was wrestling. While his diagnosis was helpful, it did not immediately make me feel better. Part of this unknown stress might have surfaced a month or so later when I read the Warning Label that came with the prescription I was taking, and I said to myself: I have that and that and that… Needless to say, I stopped taking that medication.

The second question had to do with what appeared to be the end of the consulting work I had been doing—and enjoying—for over twenty years due to decisions over which I had no control. Cutbacks in federal, state, and foundation funding meant that much of my work would be ending within a few months. This raised the inevitable questions about finances and whether I would have enough to continue doing the things I liked (and wanted) to do. While I had a variety of investments, I had no clue how much income they would provide or for how long. A series of meetings with my financial advisers did little to calm my fears in this area.

The third issue related to this was that I really wasn't ready to see my professional life come to a screeching halt. After having invested so much of my time and energy in my work, consulting with educators and students around the country—and being privileged to meet a lot of great people along the way—I wasn't ready to give this up. I had no idea of what I would do next, but I did have vivid memories of my grandfather, who was vice president of an advertising agency in New York City, being put out to pasture when he turned sixty-five. He was lost without his daily commute into the city. He begged his former employer to let him stay on a little longer, which they finally did, but it wasn't the same. Someone else was occupying his office, and he was given few real responsibilities. He finally did retire for good a few years later. By then, he had purchased a house in the suburbs, had it renovated, and had taken up painting and gardening. But the transition wasn't easy for him. An important part of his identity was taken from him when he was forced to retire before he was ready. Remembering his struggle with retirement did nothing to help me face mine. The underlying questions for me were: What happens when something ends before I am ready? and What is my history with endings? How do I typically handle them?

I couldn't picture myself sitting at home reading or puttering around in my garden. A partial glimpse of what the future might hold for me occurred in May 2011 when I was making what turned out to be my last trip from my home in Columbus, Ohio, to Jackson, Mississippi, to conduct end-of-the-year site visits with high school students and teachers for a project there with which I was involved. On the plane from Atlanta to Jackson, I was seated next to an older couple who were wearing Red Cross volunteer vests. I don't normally talk with people on a plane—I am one of those people who put on noise-canceling earphones and tune everyone and everything out. But just as I was settling in with Handel's Water Music, I heard a voice telling me to take off my earphones and talk with my seatmates.

So I took off my earphones and turned to my seatmates and initiated the conversation by saying that I had noticed their Red Cross vests and asked them where they were from and why they were heading to Jackson. We're from the Detroit area, and we're headed to Jackson to relieve the volunteers who have been there for the last two weeks helping out with the response to the tornado that went through the city two weeks ago, they replied.

Then I asked, How did you get interested in doing this kind of thing? What kind of training do you need? They replied that they were both retired and had been looking for something to do with their free time that might make a difference. They saw an article in their local paper that described volunteer opportunities at the Red Cross and decided to call to see what they could do. The rest, as they say, was history. As the plane was making its final descent into the Jackson airport, I found myself thinking, I could do that, and it might be fun and exciting and challenging. While I had never done anything about this, it did get me thinking about what I might want to do in my retirement years that would give my life meaning and purpose.

One of the problems I face in dealing with change is that I have spent the better part of my professional life working with various theories that describe how people change and grow over their lifetimes. People who know me well would probably say that I have a good grasp of these theories and can explain them well to others. My challenge is that I have rarely felt a need to apply what I know about the lifelong process of change and development to my own life. I haven't always greeted opportunities for change and growth with open arms. I recognized that I have probably spent way too much time living in the past or trying to control the future and not nearly enough enjoying the present. As someone once said, You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the old one.

The truth of this was brought home to me a few summers ago. I grew up Lutheran and spent half of my professional life as an ordained Lutheran minister—mostly in Lutheran campus ministry at The Ohio State University. The two major branches of the Lutheran family—the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod—had had a presence at OSU from the 1940s but done separately. In the 1980s, the two church bodies entered in talks, which resulted in a cooperative Lutheran presence at OSU. This lasted until 1993 when the LC-MS (to which I belonged) decided it no longer wished to participate in the cooperative ministry at OSU. I was effectively retired the following June. After serving a year as a vacancy pastor in a small, caring country church (Lutheran), I decided it was time for a change and discontinued my active connections with the Lutheran church altogether and joined a local community church affiliated with the United Church of Christ. While there were things I missed in this church, it felt pretty much like home for almost ten years.

Because of a change in 2012 in the summer worship schedule at that church, my wife and I decided to take the summer off to visit a Lutheran church near our home. We picked this particular church because my wife's daughter and family were members there before they moved to St. Louis, and we had worshipped there on a number of occasions. As the summer progressed, we became more and more aware of how comfortable we felt worshipping there. We liked the liturgy and the pastors and enjoyed the welcoming fellowship, which was sometimes missing in our previous church.

In July that same year, our granddaughter participated in a Youth Gathering in New Orleans sponsored by the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America). As my wife and I watched the live TV feed of the evening services together, I found myself in tears over what the speakers were saying. Through those tears, I found myself repeating the same sentence over and over, It's time to go home! It's time to go home! We weren't really looking for a new church home when we decided to join All Saints Lutheran Church in Worthington, Ohio—it just snuck up on us.

Sometimes, that's the way life is—it just sneaks up on us and presents us with opportunities we never even dreamed of. When that happens, the question we face is, How will we respond to these opportunities? Will we try desperately to hold onto the old and familiar or will we embrace—perhaps even celebrate—these as opportunities for possible change and growth? We will be exploring this issue in greater detail throughout this book. Along the way, I will be inviting you to join me in journaling in response to questions on which I journaled myself. I will also be suggesting ways we can change our perspective on these doorways to growth.

I suspect that returning to my roots as a Lutheran is just another one of the many changes that will likely occur in my life during the next few years. All these changes will likely involve serious reflection on what I want and am able to do to make the time I have left meaningful—both to me and to those around me.

In her book, The Third Chapter of Life, Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (2009) suggests that there are at least two types of retirement. One is what she refers to as a retirement of leisure, the kind we might associate with living in a gated community on a golf course in Florida or Arizona and playing golf every day. The focus of this kind of retirement is clearly on leisure and relaxation.

The other is one in which people take the skills and abilities they have gained over a lifetime and use them to find ways of living and working that are active, generous, and altruistic. Those who choose this kind of retirement want to bring their wisdom and resources into new areas of life; they want to be useful, not used, and engaged rather than isolated.

Neither of these is right or wrong. Nor is there a one size fit all model. What matters is that—within the limits of health and finances—we are actively involved in choosing the kind of retirement we want. For this reason, I am suggesting that there are other retirement models out there—each of which combines bits of each of the two kinds Lawrence-Lightfoot describes. For example, another model gives individuals the freedom to travel and participate in other activities of interest to them and join with others to address social issues about which they care. Some will even find time for a part-time job.

Given this, a find and create your own model approach to retirement suggests that knowing more about yourself, your life experiences, and how you make decisions may help you find a balance that is your best fit. We'll have much more to say about this in Chapters 5 and 6.

To help you get from where you are now in your life to finding your purpose in retirement, you will be invited to reflect on how you got to where you are, look at some of the predictable stages (things that happen to almost all of us) and how these have helped to shape you, and then offer a model for exploring what may come next for you.

Chapter 1 looks at the events, people, and experience that have helped to shape the person you are atthismoment in our journey.

Chapter 2 explores the predictable stages or predictable things that happen to most of us and help shape us.

Chapter 3 looks at the ways we negotiate our way through the inevitable and predictable changes of life.

Chapter 4 looks at the different ways we go about making decisions and plans.

Chapter 5 begins with a more detailed definition of retirement and explores some ways that may help you find a retirement model that will give your life meaning and purpose.

Chapter 6 looks at the importance of developing your very own Personal Purpose Statement to guide your retirement and some strategies for checking to see if you are on track in living the retirement you planned.

In talking about this final stage of life, the psychologist Erik Erikson said that the fundamental issue to be resolved as we reflect on the life we lived is whether—while acknowledging that we have done some dumb things, made some mistakes, and hurt some people along the way—we are still able to conclude that our journey has been worthwhile. The alternative is a sense of despair over roads not taken and opportunities missed. Together we will explore ways to reframe our lives and our experiences in positive ways so that we can use the lessons life has taught us to create our own unique retirement model.

When I naively began working on this project ten years ago, it did not occur to me that my background as a Christian would be an integral part of everything that I had experienced and learned during my journey. But as I got deeper into the research and began to jot down themes that were important to me, I began to realize that this book afforded me the opportunity to be intentional about integrating two perspectives that are all too often seen as unrelated.

The first perspective is from the field of developmental psychology, involving the work of people such as Erik Erikson, Daniel Levinson, Carol Jung, and many others who have spent years studying and setting forth models of adult development. The second perspective comes from my background as a Christian minister and what the Judeo-Christian faith has had to say to me about the purpose of our lives.

In making the decision to bring these two perspectives together, I have tried to be as inclusive as I can and have intentionally included material from a wide range of faith traditions whenever possible so that readers will benefit from the exercises included in each chapter. For example, whenever I use the word God, please feel free to substitute words such as Higher Power, the Universe, Yahweh, Allah, or the Buddha. Feel free to use other phrases if this helps you in responding to the journal prompts.

My intent in using language from the Judeo-Christian tradition is not to persuade anyone that my tradition is the correct/true one. It is rather to facilitate a process that may help you to better understand how you got to where you are in your journey today and open doors for you to begin to think about what could be next for you, especially in retirement, so that the final years of your life might be both meaningful.

Chapter 1

Where Am I Now and How Did I Get Here?

Your vocation is that place where your deep gladness meets the world's great hunger.

—Frederick Buechner

Nothing shapes our lives so much as the questions we ask—or do not ask.

—Sam Keen

In this chapter, we begin the process of identifying and clarifying the story (or stories) by which you and those around you live. What do I mean by the word story