A week ago my wife and I were trekking around Universal Orlando. She has just retired, and we decided to get away for a bit. Something we haven’t done in, oh, 40 some years. Jobs and family and stuff kept us pretty much at home except for the occasional weekend away. So, this trip was kinda special.
I took my laptop with me hoping to be able to write a bit about the trip while we there. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Besides not having any time to write, the wifi at the resort sucked big time. My computer is slow at the best of times. Add single bar wifi and, well, I could have sent letters via the USPS faster. So, that’s why I’ve been absent from here for a while.
Now, we’re home. It took until Wednesday to recuperate and get back to whatever this is that passes for normal. And, I use that term purposefully.
“Whatever this is that passes for normal.”
I retired from printing three years ago. That was at the beginning of Covid-19 and my time getting fixed up from colon cancer. Not the circumstances that I had thought would ring in the new life of “Formerly employed.” But, over the last three years I’ve tried to adjust and figure out that proverbial “New Normal.” (Spoiler alert: There’s nothing New or Normal about it. Just sayin’.) I have developed new routines and practices that help make sense of every day being Saturday. As time goes on, I’m adding some things to that in order to actually get stuff done. Like this blog.
Now, however, a new variable has been added to the mix. There are now TWO of us retired and trying to make sense of this life of non-employment. Life is never boring! I truly have no idea where the road will lead us. For sure, we want to travel a bit. I proved that I can still do the whole road trip thing. We drove to Orlando in 2 days. We drove home in 1. I’m encouraged that I can get us where we want to go, when we want to go. So, that’s good.
We also have the house that really needs some lovin’. All of those fixes and updates that have been set to the side all of these years are screaming at us for attention. There are walls to fix and paint, a roof that needs help, new windows to install, shutters to build, a garden to put in, and, of course, that grass that never stops growing. I don’t think that we’ll lack for stuff to do.
For me, besides all of the stuff that needs done, those things that my wife and I will work on together, there is the need to continue to study, think, and write. I lost way too much time while connected to the Fundagelical world. I am still trying to heal from what I would consider spiritual abuse. It wasn’t intentional, of course. While many would have viewed some of our early years as ‘cultic,’ there was no manipulation for malicious or self-serving ends by the leaders. They were, and still are, simply ignorant. That doesn’t lessen the damage done by that world.
So, I will continue to reflect, meditate, contemplate, study, and proclaim. I can do nothing else. If anyone is helped to find freedom from the chains that bind them to a false image of God and God’s people, then my work is a good thing. Besides, I find release and healing through this work as well.
Anyway, I just wanted to put something out there to let everyone know that I’m alive and kicking. I hope to reflect more on the whole retirement thing as we grow into it. I’ll also continue to attempt to speak truth to power as I see it.
If you have anything to suggest or comment on, please use the comments section at the end of this post. Perhaps, we can begin a dialog about things that will build us all up.