Article February 24, 1997 Issue

Adjusting to retirement with love

Robert A. Johnson

Retirement from a job long held brings many changes to your life. If you are looking forward to retirement, you may think a lot about what you will do with your time. Do you have any hobbies? Any public service interests? Anything you can do to bring in some extra money? These are all legitimate concerns. And if we have someone else in the household, we might wonder how our retirement will affect him or her.

A friend I know found that when her husband of more than forty years retired, some adjustment was necessary. She loved her husband and he was a very good man, but having him around the house so much was a problem. He was a perfectionist, and he began to focus in on everything she did in a very critical way. She said, "I am somewhat laid back, and after some months, I began to wonder if our long marriage could survive this new arrangement."

My friend knew, though, that when one is faced with a problem like this, one's own thinking needs to change. Our thought controls our own experience, so we need to watch our thought in order to be peacemakers of the sort Christ Jesus had in mind when he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matt. 5:9). To be a peacemaker of the highest sort, my friend knew that she needed to bring her thinking into line with the law of God, into line with those two great commandments given by Jesus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Matt. 22:37, 39).

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