Retirement

One of my favorite poems is Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" – about coming to a fork in the road and deciding which road to take. In some ways, making the decision to retire was like taking a different road, a different road the congregation is on. I still have over nine before actual retirement date, and there is a lot to be done in terms of congregational self-study, and the calling process, but you can see that our roads have diverged.

I seem to be frantically scrambling to get the last small repairs done on the house, and to keep everything picked up so that it can be seen at a moments notice. I seem to be looking forward to retirement finances, and all the paperwork that will be involved with that, and with planning for the future, as much as that can be done. The congregation is thinking about a new pastor and the call process, and repairs that need to be made on the building in the near future, and what's going to happen with the school and how do we keep that going.

I can't say for certain that the grieving over my retiring is done, but to those people who used to be mad about it aren't any longer. The congregation seems to have moved on and is thinking about the future, which is definitely good. Over the next few months I will get to guide them in their calling process and self-study that leads up to that, and perhaps have the chance to help break-in a new graduate before I retire. But it's very clear now that the roads have diverged, and that we're headed in two separate directions.