I’d “flunked” retirement several times. After three terms in the Wisconsin State Legislature, I “retired” to raise three children. After reentering the workforce and spending 12 years as a university administrator, I felt it was time to move on again. I began to collect retirement benefits, only to be lured away months later to take a position as a nonprofit executive. When I left five years later, I felt I had given all I had to offer to the organization. I was happy to pass the baton to the next leader in order to spend more time on the things that mattered most to me. 

I was expecting paradise. Instead I felt loss. It seemed to be the end of many satisfying relationships. An end to the ability to make a difference in the world. An end to purposeful living and opportunities for growth. This next phase of life should have been a joyful one, just the next turn on a forward path. Instead, I was taken in by the testimony of friends who said they felt invisible and voiceless when they retired. 

I had lost heart, and it was affecting my health. I had prayed about alarming chest pains on and off for several years. Then came the wake-up call. I had chest pains so severe that I feared for my life. 

I realized that it was this false view of God as powerless, and somehow separate from me, that had led to my disheartenment.

As soon as I was able, I called a Christian Science practitioner and told her my immediate need, while pouring out my disappointments at not making progress on a number of fronts, as well as my disheartenment that I didn’t seem to be able to demonstrate the quick cures in Christian Science that had come so naturally when I was younger. The practitioner stopped me short. She asked if I agreed that God could heal me. I thought the answer was obvious. After all, I was calling for Christian Science treatment. But did I really believe that a better understanding of God, and of my relationship to Him, would bring complete physical and spiritual restoration? 

The practitioner urged me to study the following passage on page 496 in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Hold perpetually this thought,—that it is the spiritual idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of healing, based upon its divine Principle, Love, underlying, overlying, and encompassing all true being.” This gave me the confidence that healing was not only possible but certain.  

It dawned on me that my feeling of separation from God’s goodness had led me to doubt Love’s ability and willingness to heal me, as well as to restore in me a sense of purpose and usefulness. What kind of Father-Mother wouldn’t love and care for His, Her, children? I realized that it was this false view of God as powerless, and somehow separate from me, that had led to my disheartenment. I had been undermining my own faith and trust in Christ Jesus’ promise as recorded in the Bible: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12).

I quickly agreed that God could and would heal me. I began to defend my right to health, as I would have argued for the rights of others when I was a legislator. I argued that God created me in His perfect image and likeness, and that health is a natural condition of my being. I knew, too, that since God is my life, and the only Life there is, my life would be preserved in this instance, as it had so many times before. 

I also began to give gratitude for the times I had felt such a connection, a sense of oneness, with divine Love that there was healing, including in other instances of physical challenges. And I remembered something I’d learned after my first career change (and since forgotten): We are always “employed” by God. He gives us daily opportunities, wherever we are, and in whatever position we find ourselves, to express the qualities we have from Him by reflection, among which are integrity, wisdom, strength, perception, lovingkindness, and honesty. This is our eternal, satisfying employment.  

I kept still and read the Bible and Science and Health until I felt at peace. I held close to the hymn “Tender Mercies” from the Christian Science Hymnal Supplement, which spoke directly to my need. It begins:

The chest pains subsided quickly. I was awed by the swift shift in thought and improvement in my physical condition that occurred as a result of arguing on God’s side, the right side. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, talks about the benefits of standing with Truth. She said, referring to Jesus’ advice to his disciples who were fishing unsuccessfully (see John 21:6), “Those, who are willing to leave their nets or to cast them on the right side for Truth, have the opportunity now, as aforetime, to learn and to practise Christian healing” (Science and Health, p. 271). 

We need not fear that our opportunities to give, or our opportunities to grow, will end. 

My outlook changed, not just that day, but over the course of the next months. I stopped complaining, and blaming others for holes in my life. I took responsibility for my continuing education, updating my computer and social media skills to enhance my ability to share renewed expectancy of good with others. I expressed greater unconditional love for family, neighbors, church and community members. I found tremendous satisfaction in digging deeper into the discovery and Discoverer of Christian Science. And I found new opportunities to volunteer at church and to pray for others. 

There is no more brokenheartedness, disappointment, and fault-finding. I now encourage others when I see their progress, and I defend my own. Most important, I am back to being joyful, trusting God’s tender mercies in even the most challenging circumstances. 

The heart trouble has not returned, and I am confident that my heart will never again “low be laid,” in the words of another hymn, because “God is round about me, / And can I be dismayed?” (Anna L. Waring, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 148). 

We need not fear that our opportunities to give, or our opportunities to grow, will end. We may not see where life’s path leads, but there is always a way forward. With God leading us, our opportunities are limitless. Take heart. We never retire from demonstrating who we are as God’s image and likeness, because God never retires.