Oh how I looked forward to retirement. That was a year and a half ago. What’s happened since?
Retirement got my home projects completed with the allotted amount of money I had
left. Now that sits dormant till I catch back up. There’s still crown molding to get and put up. Still, doors to paint. Really, I would like to replace them. There’s always something to do if you’re a homeowner.
But here’s the kicker. I retired from Civil Service. The work-a-day world was over, but the need to work at something is still there. I looked around and found most of the guys who retired in around the same time as I did are back to work somewhere. The drive from years of getting up and going to a job are so stamped on our minds. I think we find ourselves empty handed and wanting for something to do.
My wife still is in the work force for a bit longer. I wish she could retire as well. Well, you know where I’m going with this anyway. She’s like me. Has to have something going on all the time. Not to say either of us can’t find a season of some program and flop down occasionally and binge watch all of it. But we do want something to do.
So what happened? I started driving cars as a dealer trade driver for multiple dealerships under a contract outfit. But I found the guy in charge cherry picked his drivers and I might get a call once or twice a month. I can’t sit around waiting for him to decide he hasn’t got enough drivers so he calls me kind of thing. I found one dealership that I went to work for and quit the former. They call me about the same amount, but pay better and I don’t have to pay for the gas in their vehicles and wait a month for reimbursement.
Libby and I went to the ETTP class that certifies people to be substitute teachers. I didn’t get hired for that, but I was taking the school bus driver’s class at about the same time and that I did get. I became a substitute bus driver, but the day I walked in I was handed two routes and drove them the rest of the year like a regular driver. This coming year I’ve been picked up as a regular driver and will be assigned a couple of routes most likely and all I can hope is that I get back at least one of the two I had last year if not both.
I’m getting to something here. I’m sneaking in the leadings and callings of God on you. People are not meant to retire. I’ve never been able to understand a called of God minister pop up one day and say they are retiring. Being called of God to the ministry is like marriage. Do you for one instant think of retiring from marriage? I hope not. Some of us have our circumstances in life that prevent us from a life-long marriage to one person, but if we are married and intent to make it a life-long commitment there is no retiring.
So what I have here is what God has led me to do. I was given an open door to driving a school bus. Not only did I get a lesson in reshaping myself to enjoy children and young people, but I get to pour into them what God has given me. They are my congregation. They are my responsibility. I take this seriously.
Driving cars for a dealership is rewarding and the person who I deal with the most is a preacher and a gospel singer. I think there’s a reason for our connection there as well.
Connection with a ministry that serves the homeless, the poor and destitute has given me an outlet to renew my skills with fixing bicycles. I’m sure most of us will realize how being able to ride a bike expanded our territory when we got our first one. Having been a bike shop manager for several years I met a few people of which one rode from Jacksonville, NC to the California coast on his bicycle he bought in our shop. Another person who had gotten out of the Marine Corp came in one morning with a back pack and bought a touring bicycle. He said he had a few months before he wanted to get back into the routines of life, so he was riding his new bicycle home. I asked where did he live. He said Oregon. So, just something so simple as a bicycle opens up a whole new world to some people. It just depends on how far do you want to take it?
The same goes with the Bible. Yesterday I wrote about my old Bible. I see some people receive a new Bible with their name on it and some little inscription inside congratulating them on some accomplishment. I wonder what they do with that Bible. Do they devour that new book or do they set in on a desk in their room to gather dust?
Okay. So I said all the above to say this. We may retire from a job, but we don’t retire from life. Life goes on and we are to endeavor to continue to increase our borders. I still have a lot to do and a lot to learn. Everyone who reads this should readily be aware of something they intend to or want to do. If you’ve left it to gather dust, get it out and blow it off and clean it up, whatever it is. You’ve got work to do.
Bible and a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. So I set my eye towards getting them. But I didn’t expect how I would get the Bible. In August I was in the mid-week service at Faith Assembly of God in Wilmington when as the end as the benediction was being prayed I felt a tap on my shoulder. When the amen was said I turned to look at a friend of mine by the name of Chuck Spooner. He leaned forward and handed me a Bible. He said God spoke to him to give it to me. I looked at it and saw that it was a Thompson Chain Reference IV edition. Chuck didn’t know this was what God had told me I should have. There it was. Handed to me. I hugged Chuck, thanked him for it and took that treasure I’d been given home with me and devoured it over the coming years. There are notes everywhere in it as you see in the picture of it now.
A short back-story to that is I was awakened one day from sleep when I was working graveyard shift by my phone ringing. It was Chuck. There was so much excitement in his voice as he began to tell me that in God telling him to give me his Bible it opened up a blessing on him by someone giving him a new Thompson Chain Reference large print red-lettered edition, which he really needed since he had very bad vision. We rejoiced in this and he went on about his business and I went back to sleep knowing all was well.
and two 16″ bicycles ready for someone to give them some degree of fun or ability to travel.
emained open, walk through it. The day I walked into the Richlands District Transportation office I was put on a bus with a woman who was leaving in a few days. She drove that morning. I drove that afternoon and next morning and then she cut me loose and I drove from Thanksgiving until the end of the school year on the two routes she left me with.
picture sitting on the shelf in the shower. At first I went into the “what the heck is that?” mode. It looked like a mouse. But what would a mouse be doing in my shower? Upon closer observation I found it to be something Libby had done. You see, I think it comes from being one generation away from the Depression era of our parents and grandparents that still invades our generation’s way of thinking. What she had done was taken two or three small pieces of soap she had left over and stuffed them in a small piece of nylon hose. This way she can get the most of the leftover soap bars. That my friend is smart thinking of days gone by.
preparation for work the next day, I cannot go to bed without setting up for breakfast the next morning. There’s one thing I can’t stand. I don’t like disorganization when there’s still the fog of sleep in my head, so I put together the coffee and water in the coffee maker the night before, but then I have to abide by Libby’s rule. Don’t set the timer so it doesn’t bother her listening to the machine gurgling before we get up. Why set up the timer for after we get up. The water I put in the maker has to be hot water. Somehow the coffee doesn’t taste just right if I put cold water in the maker the night before by her thinking. Then I lay out the small frying pan, spatula and small bowl on the stove. When we get up I scramble two eggs with cheese and bacon bits for Libby and then on the other counter is my paper towel with a butter knife for toast. Once her breakfast is done I move the toast over to beside the stove and cook one or two eggs with cheese with bacon bit (real bacon, btw) for myself.
period which we were present together in. My teens were my peers with which I went to school with from grade 1 through 12. We started together, we finished together. We created a lot of memories together. Those years set the tone for how I viewed life.
My eyes opened this morning around six fifteen with the morning light peering in around the window curtains, and sprawled out pups around the bed. Libby was quietly sleeping. All is well with the world.
towards maintaining a healthy respect for my well-being. We all know the general perspective of men is that they don’t go to the doctor unless they are really down and out sick. Why is that? Is it the idea they don’t feel the need because “I’m a man”? Of course we have also seen the perspective of women over when a man gets sick and it becomes a major catastrophe compared to a woman with the same ailment. Point is, just what are men supposed to do.
Livin' Small 