Yesterday I suggested that you review your career from the perspective of your retirement and name some of the more painful, disappointing, or negative experiences during your career. Just naming such experiences will give you some perspective.
Now look at your list of experiences and note the types of feelings that each generated in you. Also, how many of those feelings still linger. It is the frozen feelings that need the most work. The people and events that generated them have long moved on but the frozen feelings are still a burden you bear. Take them one at a time and lift them up to God for meditation. Where do you need to ask God’s help in letting such feelings go? Where do you need to engage in some act of forgiveness? Where do you see some redemptive result that God has brought about because of that experience? In the latter case, without ignoring the real pain you felt, can you now give thanks for the redemptive results?
Over time, as you work through such events, you are engaging God on an intense basis. As part of that experience, identify biblical images of those who carried parallel burdens in their journey of faith. Note how even Jesus was not protected from disappointment, betrayal, personal suffering, etc. Other biblical figures sometimes failed to respond faithfully to such events. Yet God continued to work through them. As you reflect on these parallels, begin to note how God has worked through you as you responded, sometimes faithfully and sometimes not so faithfully, in your journey of faith.
It is through re-establishing that connection with the one who called you that you can both honor your past journey and prepare for wherever God wants to call you next.
