Unlike Bill and Kris featured in Parts 1 and 2 of this Transitions series, Brenda chose another way, a “turn-key” sabbatical experience as a way of pausing to discern the next steps in life. Pondering retirement from the US Army, Brenda wasn’t sure how the post-military phase of her life would unfold. A friend recommended that…
Kris Casey chose a serendipitous approach for her post-work life. Upon retirement from a corporate accounting job, she was exhausted and burned out. It took 10 months before she felt restored enough to plan her next steps. She used this time primarily for fitness: working out at a gym, walking and bike riding, and catching…
What will you do when you grow up? Children often get asked this question, but it’s one we should continue probing throughout life, remembering as we get older, the answers will vary. We are not one and done. Life is change, and what happens is often not under our control. For certain transitions, the planning…
When I met Jack Norton he was eighty years old: energetic, outgoing and long-since retired after almost forty years in the US Army. I’d been waiting on a friend in the bar at West Point’s Thayer Hotel when he walked in and pulled up a chair. Norton was there for an alumni conference and wore…
I’m trying to muddle through. But there are days when the pieces look like they won’t ever go together. Honestly, some days the pieces don’t even look like they belong together. I have learned the hard way I am an overachiever, excessively compelled to volunteer. When someone I know says, “Can you help me __________?”…
As the on-call chaplain, I had answered a page to the neurological ICU to be with family as doctors reported unequivocal results of testing. The patient was brain dead and not going to survive the stroke that caused her hospitalization. Her distraught daughter cried, “It’s too soon!” The patient was 85 years old. Is there…
I can’t even count the number of times I have said, “Just a minute, I’ll be right there,” to my kids. Embroiled in the minutia required to keep a family fed, clothed and running, I often missed some of the fun, or at least, joined it already in progress. Eventually, it became a habit —…
