So, how does retirement feel?

I officially retired on June 30. Actually, I was out of town on that date. I completely vacated my office, turned my keys, my OCC ID and my FOB in on June 14, so even though I was paid through June 30, I suppose retirement actually began after that date. Many people have asked me the question posed in the title of this post. I have not know how to answer, because, in a certain way, this summer did not substantially feel any different from any other summer.

What I mean is this. We have always traveled, sometimes extensively, during the summer. Earlier this summer, we traveled to New England, driving through Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. We spent a week in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, and made day trips from there. We spent one night in Bangor, Maine after visiting Acadia National Park. A highlight for me was the visit with long-time Chilean friend, Guillermo Palma, and his family.

Guillermo and I (June 29, 2024 in Gardner, MA)
Guillermo and I (June 29, 2024 in Gardner, MA)

It was also a special treat for us to attend Movement Christian Church in Merrimack, NH, where we saw a number of people related to Ozark Christian College: Rhett Johnson and his wife, Elisa, Amanda Chitwood, Charlie Cameron, Aaron Rathbone, and the Papp family. I was saddened that I did not get to see my friends, Brandon and Alexia Musselman, who were out of town. On the way back home, we spent several days in Indianapolis visiting Kyle and Charissa Bellinger.

The past two weeks, I have been involved in two different funerals. Wayne Lowry sang with me in a quartet beginning in 1971. The quartet was special for him, because on a quartet trip to Richards, MO, he met June, who became his wife. Wayne and I were both diagnosed with prostate cancer about the same time. Thankfully, since having surgery, I have been cancer free. Wayne was not so fortunate. The cancer returned with a vengeance, and he graduated to new life with Christ just days before he would have celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary. Other quartet members, Ralph Shead and Tim Crowe, and I traveled to Wayne’s two funerals, one at the Greenwood (MO) Christian Church, where he had been the bi-vocational minister for the past 13 years, and the second at Lucerne, MO (his home church, almost as far north as one can go in Missouri). It was a special blessing to sing at his memorial services.

This past week, I officiated a funeral for a dear friend from Deerfield, MO. Fritz T. Koopmann was a successful farmer and a very generous supporter of Christian causes. He was 83 years old, a picture of health, actively farming quite a large spread. On Saturday August 3 he had been working on his combine, came into the house, was talking with his wife, and went into the arms of Jesus. For him, it was the best way to go. (He might have told you that he would like to die on the combine, but this was the next best thing. Fritz was a member of Clayton Christian Church, where I preached from 1973-1976. I combined with former student (now a professor at Johnson University in Tennessee), who preached there from 1997-2003, to do the funeral. The grief for the loss is huge, but the joy our brother feels is palpable. It was an honor to participate in his funeral.

I must have eaten something I shouldn’t have eaten. After the funeral, I was awakened about 1:25 AM, thinking I needed to go to the restroom. I wear my Apple Watch to bed. It measures my sleep. When I woke up, I activated the watch to see what time it was. The display was illegible to me, as my vision was distorted. I stepped out of bed to head to the bathroom, and immediately realized that I could not walk. Everything was swirling around for me. I crawled to the bathroom. I had broken out in a full-body perspiration with a fever. I spent most of the rest of the night on the bathroom floor, barking into the toilet bowl numerous times. I had just come from a funeral, and thought I know my eternal reward is with Jesus, I alternated between being afraid that I would die, and being afraid that I would NOT die. I think it had been decades since I had vomited, and yet, once it started, I could not let anything pass my mouth without vomiting, FOR ABOUT 20 HOURS! Above, I mentioned leisure reading. I first read John Grisham when his first bestseller, The Firm, when it came out in 1991. Living in Chile, it was not easy to get books in English. Jeff and Kathy Phillips had a paperback copy of The Firm, and shared it with our missionary community. It is a veritable page-turner. Before the funeral, I had started reading Grisham’s sequel to The Firm, titled The Exchange (published just last year, 2023). Rose began reading it after I started, but with the funerals and being sick, she finished it before I did. She asked me if I had finished it. I said, “No, it’s been kind of slow getting started,” to which she responded, “I’m at the place where I don’t want to put it down!” I picked it up again yesterday. It is getting to the place where I don’t want to put it down. The protagonist was in Tripoli, Libya, and got food poisoning. Grisham’s description was eerily familiar to me. I am thankful to be on the mend now.

I suppose that the summer really has felt somewhat different (like retired) in that in a normal summer, any non-vacation moments would have been spent working to perfect my skills, trying to figure out new and better ways to communicate with my students. In that sense, I have had more leisure time this summer. For example, I have read more fiction than ever before, the most recent books about which I will write a few lines in a bit. I have continued more devotional reading in the Greek New Testament, as I have done over the past several years. Just this morning, I was reading in Acts 2, and I rediscovered a cool grammatical construction in Acts 2:6, 11. If you are dying to know what it is, you can ask me. I have also continued to work on Duolingo on modern Greek, trying to avoid making a complete fool of myself when we visit Greece in the fall. I have been proficient with Koine Greek for a long time, but modern Greek is a different matter. So . . . when I am in Greece, I will be completely prepared if some Greek person tries theses golden oldies on me:

  • We all live in a yellow submarine.
  • The best defense is a good offense.
  • I am your worst nightmare.
  • I wash my elbow before my match. (The only reason this sentence comes into play is that the word elbow (ανκώνα) and the word match (αγώνα) sound so similar.) But, the truth of the matter is, you would never want to enter a match (competition or game) with a dirty elbow, would you?
  • Entry to the operating room is prohibited.
  • The internet and the web are almost the same thing.
  • I am forced to stay in bed for at least five days.
  • May the force be with you.
  • You said that you like me. Are you drunk?
  • My shoulder hurts, however. Ο(This one is used because the word for shoulder (ώμος) and the word for however (όμως) sound identical, but are spelled differently.)

So, how does retirement feel? Today may be the start of feeling retired. This is the Monday the 2-day OCC Faculty Retreat begins. For the past 30 years, I have attended the Faculty Retreat. Today, I will not be there. Instead, I am sitting in the Subaru dealer getting recommended transmission service for vehicles with more than 100,000 miles. I brought my laptop with me to do work, i.e., I’m writing these lines. (I missed the first day of the Faculty Retreat in 2017. I had my 1990 Honda 400cc motorcycle loaded up to go to the retreat, when I heard that my mother had fallen, and I took a detour that day to the hospital, joining the retreat for the second day).

One week from today, classes at OCC will begin. We will be in California. I’m retired now, so I can travel during the school year. Two years ago, we drove to Seattle for an Alaskan cruise. Our intention was to get off the ship, drive down the Pacific coast (at least to San Francisco) before heading east. Testing negative for COVID was a requirement to BOARD the cruise ship, but it was NOT a requirement to get OFF. Both of us contracted COVID on the ship, so we returned home as quickly as we could. I shunned the dosage of Paxlovid and powered through.

So . . . on Friday and Saturday we will drive to Denver (I’m getting the car serviced right now). We’ll board a non-stop flight to San Francisco, where we will spend a week. Tourist attractions will be in and around San Francisco, Sequoia National Park and Yosemite National Park. I am thankful that I have an America the Beautiful Lifetime Entry card to National Parks for senior citizens. They now cost $80. I got mine years ago when they cost only $10.

Next Sunday, I plan to visit a Spanish-speaking congregation in San Jose, California that is pastored by an old (not as old as I am) Chilean friend. Néstor Morales Rojas ministers in San Jose, California. I first made his acquaintance when he was 17 years old. I was teaching a course on the book of Philippians at a leadership camp. I was young and energetic (your might read foolish into that description), and I imagined that my students would memorize the entire book of Philippians. I thought, “If I can do it in my second language, they should be able to do it in their mother tongue.” I have since mellowed, but my students DID indeed memorize a substantial portion of the book. I credit, Néstor, however with teaching me a very important lesson about Spanish. I would call all of my students together, to make them drill on the memorization of the text, before allowing them to play futbol. After drilling the Scripture memorization, they were free to hit the cancha. As would call them to gather together to practice memorization of the text, what I intended to say was:

¡Vengan todos! (Everybody come!)

What I actually was saying, however was:

¡Vengan, toros! (Come, bulls!)

In reality, a simple Spanish R [ɾ] sounds a lot like an English D, whereas the Spanish D (ð) sounds like a soft English TH. So as I was intending to save everybody, what I was really saying was bulls. I have credited Néstor with teaching me the difference. Everybody (I am thinking the word todos right now) was aware of my error in pronunciation, but only Néstor was willing to correct me on it. I look forward to seeing him.

Néstor Morales

We will spend a week in Colorado (Pagosa Springs) on the way home from California. We’ve never been there, so we will see some of the majestic beauty of SW Colorado. We’ll probably take the train from Durango to Silverton, soak in the hot springs of the area. I mentioned white-water rafting to Rose, and she said that I might do that by myself one day (she has gone rafting with me two times in Colorado in other years). We’ll head straight east from Pagosa Springs on the way home, probably passing through Broken Arrow on Labor Day as we return home.

On Thursday, I will speak at the local Retired Minister Breakfast, which, I think meets quarterly. It will be held at Spring River Christian Village. Anticipating my retirement, it has been on my calendar for 8-9 months. My brother-in-law, Mike Gage, is one of the organizers. As a Jr. Member of that club, I hope to share something with them that will be worthwhile. We’ll leave the next day for our trip.

So . . . how does retirement feel? It’s starting to feel real. But I’ll likely know for certain how it feels about a month from now.

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