What Inspired Me (Part 2)?

 Redemptorist Renewal Center

I was a little down at the reality of retirement, saying goodbye to all those years with one employer, plus all the friends I had met and grown to love, walking the halls everyday! I discovered that even though there can be a silver lining in retirement, it is still an adjustment.

 I really didn't know what I would do, didn't know what I'd like to do.  I figured I'd just wander around aimlessly and something would hit me over the head, like it had the three years before I fell in love with healthcare and went into nursing.

I prayed but my prayer was a bit lackluster, dry, arid. I felt prickly, just like a cactus.  God was on the sidelines.  I knew He was around but I didn't have a whole lot to say to Him at the time...didn't have a lot to say to many people at that time.  I did talk with a couple of individuals, one being my own spiritual director. No advice, no "shoulds", just listened to my tears, fears and even gratitudes.   It felt like life was coming at me from many directions and I was doing all I could do to simply be in the game of life without much of anything else. It was not an easy time and this continued for longer than I would like to admit.  Sometimes in the middle of a compost heap of life it is hard to figure out what's going to come of it and being in this compost heap sometimes got me all heated up, worked up and messed up.  All I could do was be where I was.

So, I just took one day at a time, remembering what someone once said, "the sun will set and the sun will rise again!"  And so, the sun set and rose everyday after that and I wasn't the one in charge. I was simply going to bed and getting up the next day.  I didn't try to "push the envelope" but continued to "do the next right thing."  It was all HARD WORK!!