Today was Election Day in Indiana and several other states. I noticed several Republicans were running unopposed. I imagined for a while that I could maybe challenge some of these career politicians myself someday. I could see myself going door-to-door meeting people and shaking hands (or fist-bumping the nervous), and asking them what issues mattered most to them. Then I found out that due to redistricting, our little rural community, with its own unique set of issues, has been lumped together with Lafayette for representation in the Indiana Statehouse. Our long-time farmer friend retired. Very concerning, indeed!
A long time ago, before the Muppets became “woke” and they were just cute and family friendly, we watched a video with our kids called The Muppet Musicians of Bremen. It became one of their favorites, and as was the case with anything our kids enjoyed, they immediately memorized most of it. One of the more memorable lines came from Mordecai Sledge, who told Leroy the Donkey it was time for him to retire.
“Well I’d love to re-tire!”
“I’m gonna git my gun and re-tire you proper!”
That was when Leroy had the sense to bug out, pulling a wagon full of musical instruments from Mordecai’s last robbery after him.
Our kids didn’t really know what retirement was in the 80s, but they thought the line was funny. So it happened that when their activist parents brought them along when they were protesting the actions of Lafayette City Attorney Tom Heide with picket signs saying, “RETIRE TOM HEIDE,” our kids were quoting the line about their gun. Which was, of course, not proper. It’s a good thing the media didn’t hear them!
There was also an ancient hound dog in the video, who used the oft-repeated self-deprecation:
“I’m old, I’m beat up, I’m wooooorrrn away,” and sometimes throwing in “... and I’m sad.”
Speaking of old dogs, there are articles out there that explain “How to Know When It’s Time to Say Good-Bye to Fido.”
We’ve thought about our aging dog, Precious, in those terms. Precious, at 16 years old, started exhibiting signs of doggie dementia last year and has thick cataracts making her helplessly blind. Now she has arthritis in her back legs.
Precious isn’t the same dog she used to be when she was young and jumpy, when she could run an obstacle course far faster than Vivi could, and when she could bark at other dogs or neighbor kids all day long non-stop and irritate the whole town. No, she sleeps all day now, except when she is making her way from bed to water dish in a manner similar to a bumper car. When the strong odor she emitted became too much for us last year, our vet put her on a daily dose of steroids, that calmed down her itch, seemed to help the dementia, and mitigated the smell.
“So Doc, what are the long term effects of steroids?”
“Well … she’s fifteen … “
Last time we went back for more of her happy pills, it was suggested that an aspirin a day would also help her arthritis problems.
So then, when is the right time to “say good-bye”?
There are a few important signs we’ll be looking for:
If she’s actually suffering
If the dementia causes aggression and she attacks anyone, most especially one of our grandkids
If she becomes incontinent.
But right now, Precious hangs out under our table when we eat, not so much waiting for us to drop food as to just know that she’s with the People she loves. Maybe she just wants to be close enough to smell our presence and feel us with her whiskers. But she’s not suffering, so we’re not ready to retire her just yet.
And then there are “people retirements,” which is really what the storyline of the Muppet Musicians of Bremen was about. The animals were feeling old and unwanted and thought they were ready to die until Leroy came along with instruments in his wagon and the brainstorm of heading to Bremen Town and embarking on a new career as “traveling musicians.”
So when’s a good time for people to switch into low gear? Is it a good thing?
On the one hand, people have been stopping work when they’ve become “old” for several centuries. And various industries adopted pensions to care for those who had put in a number of years with them, especially members of the military. But mandatory or highly recommended government policy enacted with the intention of getting older workers out of the workforce in the U.S. began with FDR and the Social Security Act of 1935. Young people needed jobs. Older workers were in the way, regardless of whether they could still perform.
Eric and I have both attained Senior Citizen status now: I, more recently. So the subject of retirement does come up. Far from speaking archaic King James English, Eric and I are at home in this time period, knowing how to send texts on our iPhones and eat healthy organic foods. What would be the purpose of retiring? How would it work with self-employment? And, … should we?
We have countless friends and family who have retired, and for various reasons. We know others who say they will never retire. And others have changed their tunes on that matter but somehow can’t achieve it.
What makes retirement so attractive in the first place?
I suppose in some ways, it is the same for us “old people” as it is for some of today’s youth, who would like to just do what they want to do without having to work for a living. The culture has somehow influenced the next generation that working gets in the way of discovering their true selves. When Eric was able to get into the local high school during lunch hour to minister to the students, he encountered far too many whose major ambition in life was to become a videogame developer or a videogame tester. Although I think we seniors have had better training in work ethic than these young people, lack of time to do those “bucket list” things is sometimes frustrating.
Some of our kids have in-laws who are retired, and they can hop in their RV’s and visit their grandkids when they want to, bringing presents and bonding with them. Am I jealous? Oh… a bit.
Maybe I could adopt a new career, like Leroy and the gang did—such as writing books to extend my influence and make the world a better place. This is my one-hundred-first post. But I don’t really have time to sell my writing to a publisher or to go through the process of getting my books on a Best Seller List. Retirement might help that ambition become profitable.
Could I run for office against a big city RINO career politician? Could I even handle that without losing my cool? Could I even think fast enough to give convincing soundbites in answer to tough questions? I know, some people are better at doing politics than others, so maybe I could be a passable candidate if not one of the top ten.
Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof just wished God would make him a rich man… basically so he didn’t have to work. His convincing argument to God was that he would have enough time to sit in the synagogue and pray. Well I know that if we don’t have time to pray now, we’ll never have time when we don’t have to work. It was a good try, Tevya! Another friend uses her retirement hours befriending the lonely, the sick, and the shut-ins, and bringing them to church or a Bible study. And one of our neighbors was well-known for mowing other people’s yards.
But why do people hang on for a long time and choose not to retire?
There seems to be a feeling that your work gives you worth. Some people are defined by their jobs, and wouldn’t really know what to do with themselves or even know how to think of themselves if they didn’t have the job anymore. Even if you get the trophy / gold pen / watch with your name on it at the retirement luncheon, would you feel like you were being put out to pasture? Are you now worthless? There are some people who philosophize just that: that anyone qualified for the senior citizen discount at Golden Corral is useless to society. (“Time to request doctor-assisted suicide, Boomers!”)
If the decision is made for you because you are unable to keep up with the demands of the job, for instance, if your knees won’t let you climb the utility poles anymore, then you aren’t troubled with trying to decide anymore, but it might still feel a bit dehumanizing. In fact, in some ways, full retirement could be harmful to your health, too. Mental health professionals point to a 40% greater risk of clinical depression among retirees.
Recently the head pastor of a large church in Indianapolis was forced into that retirement decision after a debilitating stroke. I’m sure he was acutely aware that his active church needed a functioning CEO. You can’t easily preach the Gospel when you can only whisper for a few minutes before tiring out. Providentially, he had just recently been discussing the question of succession with his church board, and that became the church’s plan of action.
But whether or not you have the decision made for you, there’s still the nagging fear in the back of your head—can I afford to quit working? What if I run out of money? What if Social Security goes bankrupt? Will my IRA stretch that far? Will my family be able to care for me? Will I be a burden on them? Bottom line is, nobody knows, really.
Our U.S. Senator Mike Braun is a wonderful example of a businessman who has also made it in politics, and he still owns his business, a much larger one than ours. But what would it take for us to retire, specifically, from Leonard’s?
Before the word “transitioning” became a buzzword for people adopting an anti-God lifestyle of pretending they were something other than what they saw in the mirror, the word came up in a regional pastors conference for the first time. Basically it meant that as some of our own pastors were aging, then we should be considering who would be next in line, and preparing for that eventuality, training our replacements.
This means relinquishing control. Could we do that at Leonard’s, without seeing the business take a nose-dive?
We know of an older woman who ran a local historical society. She did a good job, but never wanted anyone else to take the job from her. Yes, it was a persistent insecurity. No one but she knew the passwords, no one but she was permitted to make any of the major decisions. This could be destructive if something suddenly happened, like if she died or became disabled. Who would run the place?
I fairly often hear, “I don’t know what we’d do if something ever happened to you and Eric.” Ah, that feeds my ego. But is that what I need? When Eric is 70 and can no longer lift a family Bible, for instance, will he still be the only one who can be consulted on what would be the proper treatment of an antiquarian book? If I am suddenly out of the picture because I need to be gone for a while to take care of my own aging dad, will nobody else know how to run the payroll? Would Leonard’s crash and burn if one of us is suddenly gone? Maybe we are not as indispensable as we think, or maybe we shouldn’t maintain that condition.
I honestly thought I was the only one who could run our website and our Facebook page, but I just found out that one of our workers has a college certificate in Media Communications. It might be time to transition after all.
Could we equip our workers with the tools they need to actually succeed us in running the business? Could we even test this theory with short trial runs by driving to New Mexico to see our grandkids? (Yes, there’s another grandson due there in August!) And what’s more, might our workers actually do a better job at running our business than we did? (Ooooh, that hurts!)
In Bible days, as a rule, security in old age came not from the government, but from a man’s son(s). That’s why it was so tragic for the widow of Nain in Luke 7 to lose her son, and why it was important for Jesus to raise him from the dead as the funeral procession passed by. Jesus knew how important that only son was to his mother.
Jacob passed the torch to twelve (!) sons, blessing them all individually before he died. Moses passed the torch of leadership on to his faithful aide, Joshua. Elijah anointed Elisha to succeed him as a prophet. And Paul trained Timothy as well as a whole slew of other elders in the various churches. Paul thought of Timothy as his own son.
There is a particularly tender passage in Acts 20, where Paul meets with a group of men who were the appointed elders of the various churches he’d been planting. He tells them that wherever he went, prophets had been continually telling him that he’ll be in chains if he goes to Jerusalem, but he is certain that the Spirit wants him to go anyway. So he explains that he’ll probably never see these men again, but exhorts them to continue doing a good job of overseeing their churches and watching out for wolves. Of course, there’s a lot of weeping involved, but Paul is confident that as he commends them to Christ, they can do the job.
“Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
“For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.
“Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.
“So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”
~Acts 20:28-32
“And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. Then they all wept freely, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, …”
~Acts 20:36-37
That last part is a far cry from when the believers were deathly afraid of Saul of Tarsus, who was going house to house to drag away anyone who believed in Jesus and put them in prison. Now he is Paul, and they’re all taking a knee, praying, and crying together, before Paul heads to Jerusalem, knowing he will certainly be put in prison himself. But the Church will go on. Jesus has established His Church, and it is unstoppable. These men are ready, and the torch is passed.
Leonard’s Books is not the same as The Church. But we know that this is God’s business, and He will take care of it, with or without Eric and me. I know, this is all theoretical, but now’s the time to try to train others to run it, before we have some disaster raining down upon us that forces our hand. Sure, all of that will be irrelevant if the Lord comes back for His Church before 2022 is over, but if He tarries, then transitioning may be the thing to do. So we’re considering it.
“Lord, it’s your business. Help us to make wise decisions about the direction of this business, and at the same time, to be ever on the lookout for Your return.
“In the Name of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, Amen”
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