Reflection #5 Recontextualizing Life
The Gap Year: Navigating Life After Retirement
Reflection #5 Recontextualizing Life
As I said in the last reflection, I am striving to recontextualize my life. By recontextualizing I mean that I am striving to reframe both my imagined and real mistakes and failures. To put to rest the what-ifs and should-haves of a lifetime to find peace and self-acceptance. Let me share two stories to illustrate the power of recontextualization: some from my various work experiences and others from my personal life.
When I first started in ministry, I served as a minister to three country churches in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. I was the first woman pastor they’d ever laid eyes on. After three years of intense pastoring, the congregation was revitalized, and the membership numbers had grown. I felt I had proved my worth and abilities even while having a baby. At the end of the third year, we realized that living so far from basic services with two children was exhausting. My husband was making a 2-hour daily commute to work at the nearest hospital. When the move did not happen, we were sorely disappointed. Taking matters into my own hands, I applied and was accepted into a chaplaincy residency program at a large medical center.
We packed our household and the four of us moved to the city of Allentown where Dale worked as an RN and I trained as a chaplain. Two years later I went before the chaplaincy certification board. I was not approved. I could have tried again. Instead, I set into motion another reroute. I was hired as an executive within the denomination’s New York City national mission body. At 35 years of age, I was the youngest and first clergywoman to serve on this cabinet. I traveled to six continents in four years. Published my first two books, one on the AIDS crisis and another a book of affirmations. I was on my way. The sky was the limit. Not quite.
The stress of navigating the complexities of the city was wearing on my husband and sons. I was away much of the time traveling the country and world. So, when I was invited to apply for a program staff position in Harrisburg that would keep me closer to home my spouse encouraged me to consider it. Plus I’d made some missteps due to my naivety about church politics and I was growing disillusioned with the bureaucracy. I decided to move on.
Harrisburg gave me the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of communities, and to research, write, and publish more books and resources. I enjoyed the work and my colleagues. During my second year in Harrisburg, the lead staff position opened up and I applied for it. Another was selected and, shortly afterward, my position was eliminated.
My next move was to sunny Florida into a staff position much like my previous one. I was encouraged to work remotely and could choose to live anywhere within the state. We excitedly bought our first home. My spouse, a registered nurse, found a position at the Orlando Regional Medical Center, 60 miles from Lakeland, the church headquarters. This was pre-COVID when remote work was not the norm. Looking back, thinking this was a good idea in a system that’d never had a remote worker was not a good choice. Being the only staff person not appearing daily in the office was truly not acceptable. My position was eliminated due to a “restructuring” and my life was changed once again.
With no job in sight, and with the promise made to my family not to move until our son completed high school, I decided to get the Ph.D. I’d always dreamed of in the hopes of teaching in a graduate program. I immersed myself in study, research, and writing. I also birthed my nonprofit, Spiritworks, Inc. Two years later, with my degree in hand and two books published from the research, I was hired as an Associate Professor at a university in Seattle, Washington. This time I made the move alone and lived solo for nine months so that our son could graduate high school.
Can I tell you that, in short order, I realized my mistake? A strong feminist progressive clergywoman was not a fit within a conservative faculty and student body. I remember crying over the phone to my husband back in Florida that this was not going to work. He reminded me that our Winter Park home had been sold and our Seattle house bought. His final word, as we hung up the phone, held his usual optimism: “We’ll make it work”. Three years later I accepted another teaching position in Seattle with a school of theology that was more progressive in some ways, but just as conservative in others. After two years I called it quits.
This time I told my spouse since he had followed me from job to job for years, that it was his turn. He could decide our next move. In truth, I was spent from years on a roller coaster ride and relieved to give over decision-making. I was done. We moved home to Pennsylvania and bought a house in Pittsburgh near my husband’s siblings and only a four-hour drive from my extended family.
In the coming years, even as I continued officially as Director of Spiritworks both writing and leading retreats, I applied for numerous positions. I was not hired to be a teacher, childcare worker, receptionist, or even a chaplain. Finally, I took a job at the downtown Macy’s as a seasonal worker to clerk dishes and blankets. In the following two years, I and my friend Maureen opened and closed a yoga studio. Then I got a call from the hospice company that didn’t hire me as a chaplain inviting me to apply for another position. For the final, almost ten years before retirement I found fulfillment as a hospice bereavement specialist and chaplain. But, at nine years and six months during the upheaval of COVID, my position was downsized.
I officially announced my retirement from full-time paid employment. I had so much to look forward to. I was happily married to a wonderful man and blessed with two sons and daughter-in-laws and three young grandchildren. Still, I felt, and still feel, a keen sense of disquiet. Now what? How will I spend the remainder of my life?
Now it’s your turn.
Take time to reflect and if in a group, share as you feel able.
I am:
a) striving to recontextualize my life.
b) identifying how I’ve made a difference in other’s lives.
c) putting to rest the what-ifs and should-haves to find peace and self-acceptance.
d) reviewing my past work life and personal life in ways that bring healing.