Enjoying Life At A Slower Pace

I retired from my professional career last week.  For 38 years I've worked in jobs that have required me to work long hours, manage multiple projects with multiple groups, and manage employees and their workloads.  They've all been high stress jobs with monstrous workloads--including the one I just retired from.  I'd been in that job for 21 years.  I'd say I average about 50 hours a week.  I worked evenings when necessary.  I worked weekends when we were behind (which was often).  I'm a morning person, so I've always been the first one there.  I've usually worked several hours before the first person arrived in the office.  Taking vacation wasn't easy, and I usually had to take it a day or two at a time because taking longer periods of time off put my whole team behind.

On top of that, my wife and I have raised a family--I've got a grown daughter who is out on her own, and a my youngest is a high school senior.  I've served on the school board.  I'm active in a number of organizations.  I've written six books.  And over the last five years I've gone through seminary and pastoral training, and been ordained, and served the last year-and-a-half as a part-time bi-vocational pastor is a small town Baptist church.  

Now I'm not old, but I'm not that young anymore either.  It's become pretty obvious in the last year or so that I can't work the kind of hours I have for many years.  I'm just not built for 70+ hours a week anymore.  It's also become clear that God has other plans for me other than just being a part-time pastor.  

And since I could retire, I did retire.  And starting in a couple months, my part-time pastorate becomes a full-time pastorate.  So I have plenty of time to rest up, and think all this through.  As I sit here on my second day of retirement in my office at the church, I realize how much I'm going to enjoy life at a slower pace.  A more intentional pace.  Having time to think.  Having time to do the best I can do instead of balancing quality with time allowed.  

It'll be an adjustment--a pastor's life and a manager's life are very different things.  One is a job and the other is a vocation.  A role.  A purpose.  If there's a lesson here for me to learn, it's to make sure I don't let my life as a pastor get as crazy busy as my professional life has been for decades. 

Too often, we think life is about doing as much as we can possibly do in the time we're given.  Unfortunately, we don't always think about what we're doing, and we wind up spending our time doing things that don't really fulfill the purpose God created us to fulfill.  Sometimes we just need to slow down to God's pace.  Maybe we do a little less, but we focus on those things that are truly important to us.  Maybe we take a little more time to talk to God and get His counsel on what we should do, instead of just filling our hours and our days with clutter that in the end is not that meaningful.  God has a purpose for us, if we'll just slow down a little bit and listen.  

If we just take a breath every once in awhile.  Slow down.  Ask yourself, or better yet ask God a simple question.  What purpose did you uniquely provision me to fill?  And then ask yourself, "Am I doing that?"  And then spend a little time listening for answers.  

If you ask God to give you direction, I can tell you with certainty you'll get it. 

~Pastor Todd Creason