What Is Your Calling?

A friend recently phoned me and began our conversation with, “Are you bored now that you are retired?”

My four children are in various throes of raising our grandchildren. I watch them and remember their seasons. I title them like book chapters I’ve read, from Stormy Beginnings to Umbilical Cord Rip-Tide.

I wonder if it is harder now, or just different. I contemplate if what I’m going through at this stage, is the same as what my mother and father went through. I  ponder over whether they saw things through smudged lenses of, “the way we did things,” or “in my day?”

I responded to my friend on the phone with a snort, ”Are you kidding? I don’t have time for boredom.”

This season’s craziness is much more of my own doing than it once was. My frenzy today, walks hand in hand with my age, and how much I choose to dump onto my own plate. It demands less of what others require.

But still, the idea that someone considers my stage of life as a piece-of-cake, slightly rankles. I feel a little bit de-valued. Because we all want desperately to be understood. Understanding bestows significance.

Our calling in life however, isn’t to oblige others to understand us.

Those on my tail, who look ahead as if retirement tilts to one side of boredom or nirvana, might miss the tension that still exists. I didn’t enter retirement by shedding, like an old garment, the goals, passions, or the purposes of younger years. I took “me” along for the ride.

This is the struggle of every season, every job, every age, and every responsibility of this life. And sometimes one season lends itself to another with a tantalizing thought that maybe, just maybe, it’s my time now.

When I feel a bit sullen because of how others might not understand my life, whether they are completely wrong or maybe a little bit right, I remind myself that their understanding sees me from where they stand now. Like we all see each other. We gaze through lens’ of being in the thick of ourselves, our season, and our experiences.

Looking through the eyes of another, no matter age or station, always requires God’s grace, especially when worry and struggles surround our own lives. And no one really warned me about that war. Because simply disengaging myself, for myself, carries the same former me-based battles over the hill.

Somehow, we’ve been mislead to believe the opposite. We feel as if we simply must be understood to be appreciated. Books, movies, fashion, churches, and political movements are fueled by the need for others to bring us value by understanding us.

And that is why now, at my age, I need to live my calling more than ever.

My calling is to know Christ.

Jesus left heaven’s glory to live on the dusty road under my feet. I cannot understand such sacrifice or fully embrace a mission that prompted Him to love me so much. I really don’t get Him.My calling is to know Christ. Share on X

He’s not swayed by my opinion of how He does things, or even if I understand why He does what He does. Nor does He need me to defend His actions. He is God. I am not.

But, He wants me to know Him.

He desires to build on that relationship that began years ago. He takes pleasure as I grow in knowledge of Him through His Word. And at my age, I get that. Because, this is a season when relationships matter a whole lot.

The Apostle Paul expressed this simple yet profound desire, “that I may know him.” (Philippians 3:10 ESV)

It happens that the deeper we know Him the better we understand Him. Yet, at the same time, the deeper we know Him, the more we realize how very little we truly understand Him or His ways.

And it is ok, because knowing establishes trust.

Knowing, yet not fully understanding, flings us prostrate at His feet. Less-of-me and more-of-Him is a good place to spend retirement.Knowing establishes trust. Share on X

“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14 ESV)

I find it easy to replace the big stresses of other seasons with new ones. Where once demands of little children and intense pressures of decisions filled my days, those slowly drop off in retirement. But the weighty struggles of health issues, losing loved ones, living situations, finances, needing help, and shrinking futures, mount. 

And yes, it is often painful. It is a bit lonely and isolating. And people perhaps don’t understand, as in the occasional, “aren’t you bored?”

But sometimes the foggy view dissipates a bit, and through the haze, I glimpse Who He is in ways which remind me, that I am nearer to home. And I recognize, knowing Him is filled with greater awe, because I cannot understand Him. He is beyond my understanding, lofty in all His ways, high and holy.

And, I want to know Him better and follow Him closer. How can I possibly be bored?

*Feature Photo by Philip Schroeder