Retirement: Part 2

After the hustle and bustle of “last” things: sermons and services, meetings and visiting classes for a final time, comes the boxing up and putting way. Moving is never fun and while I have not moved from my home packing up my office was not an easy task.

In a dated musical, “I Do, I Do,” one of the final songs speaks to a long marriage and to downsizing and moving on to a new place and new possibilities. I had forgotten about this musical until the final worship service of the Kansas West Conference of the United Methodist Church in June of 2013. Kansas West, Kansas East and the Nebraska conferences of the UMC had voted to become one conference on January 1, 2014.

I was struck at the time at how emotional that last service was for me. I had voted for one conference, rather than three served by the same bishop. I knew what it was like to serve a three point charge: three times the meetings and paperwork are not three times the fun! Still, I had attended my first Kansas West Conference as youth member in 1974. So many memories and appointments were from that conference and an intimacy of knowing most everyone is now lost in a bigger conference. Not bad, just a different experience.

That last service brought home that there are beginnings and endings. It is the way of life. In Ecclesiastes the author writes: “To everything there is season, a time. for every matter under heaven.” (3:1) At that last worship service, this song, “Roll Up the Ribbons” was sung at the end of the service along with a person walking down the aisle with a suitcase. We also used that for Pastor Christopher Eshelman’s final Sunday at West Heights UMC.

“Roll up the ribbons, fold up the papers, stow all these things away. This day is done and another is on its way.” It took longer than I thought to pack up my office. Part of the reason was I lost a week after contracting Covid-19. Then all the things that needed to be done was scrunched together. So my husband and I went in to finish packing, but there was still more to be done.

Forty years of files is an amazing amount of paper. Most were things from before the digital age, but not all. Files of classes I taught, sermon idea files, a file for every liturgical season for every appointment I served along with bulletins, newsletters, sermon notes. You get the pictures, actually here is an actual picture:

This is the top of a 55 gallon drum for recycling paper. I filled this one and two others three quarters full. So much paper, so many sermons and classes and notes and thoughts. As I dumped them I wondered why I had not done so earlier. I had gone back and looked at my thoughts and understandings and the exegetical work I had done before, but not for a long time. It took retirement for me to let go of all of this.

Now, to be fair, I saved two small boxes of paper to go through at a later date. I realized that most of this wasn’t useful any more. It had served its time. I went through my hundred of books, left a few for the church, kept maybe 5-6 boxes for me and the rest will go to my daughter’s bookstore Fables, in Goshen, Indiana.

This is the second load. Again, so many not useful to me anymore, but may be useful for someone else down the road. Letting go is not easy, but feels so good when I do it and understand that this time and season does not require these things anymore.

“Pack up the present, look to the future, one thing I know is true, the best day of all is the one that is on it’s way, waiting for you.” Every move has been accompanied with joy and sorrow, uncertainty and hope. Every new appointment has been a blessing, but leaving was always hard and I grieved those undone ministry moments and that I would no longer be that appointment’s pastor. I also anticipated the joys that were on their way and the new possibilities that would be open to me, because I was willing to say yes to a new ministry opportunity.

Now as I retire from active ministry, I can affirm that statement “the best day of all is the one that is on it’s way.” Every move, every change has brought new best days as the future becomes the present moment. “To everything there is a season and a time for every moment under heaven.” Packing up the present and looking to the future, I trust and believe that the new days yet to unfold will be filled with God’s grace and blessing. Those new days are waiting for me as I live into what the future holds.

I am graced to serve in whatever comes next.