Last whine, rant, post, whatever, about this book. Promise!. 😀 This last bit sort of echoes what a lot of your comments have been saying.
`Another opportunity awaits you in this ‘between’ time, and that is the opportunity to give voice to your soul. This can be a wonderful time to deepen your spiritual life, for this period shares many characteristics associated with religious retreats and pilgrimages.
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You are necessarily more alone, even if others are around, for this is your transition — no one can experience it for you. You are a step removed from everyday routine, and perhaps far removed.
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You face questions for which you do not yet have answers, and for which your old answers may no longer work. You are on a search for something bigger than you, something deeper. And in your heart you know it’s not something, but Something. Or Someone.
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When that awareness comes, your transition becomes a time of the Eternal. If you’re fortunate, you will know the experience of searching until you are found.
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I guess that’s really what I’m doing during this year before Drollery retires. Searching myself (even as I put all those pottery pieces back together) to see if I have the internal resources I need to make this a good time for us. A time when we can be really close and not have a lot of extra stress on our relationship.
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One must not always think so much
about what one should do,
but rather what one should be.
(Meister Eckhart)
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Sometimes we just don’t realize how important it is to keep an eye on that other end of life even WHILE we’re raising our family. It’s a mistake WE made (thanks in part to three separate job setbacks), and now we’re doing our best to reconcile it. Drollery is mainly concerned with the financial aspects of this maneuver. Me? I guess I want to make sure it will end up being well with our souls, so to speak. That’s why I liked the end of this chapter so much as I really have a sense of the spiritual in the middle of all this change.
James Miller had some suggestions as how to help find your way through the MIDDLE PLACES. He suggests:
- Visit prior transitions
- Take respites
- Rub up against nature
- Inventory your resources
- Visualize ideal outcomes
- Make a retreat
- Pray in a new way
I know we’ll be doing some of this during the coming year. I heartily suggest buying this little book if you need help finding your way through CHANGE. It’s very short, 63 pages, and has beautiful full-color pictures in it. It’s Welcoming Change: Discovering Hope in Life’s Transitions by James E. Miller.
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Thank you, guys, for bearing with me as I journaled my way through part of this book. Sometimes just getting those fears out there on a page in front of me goes a long way toward taking the “scary” out of things.
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Picture Credits:
Transition — blog.loukavar.com
Butterfly — wisdom-trek.com
Impromptu Promptlings 
I’m watching from the corner. You are going to successfully manouever all this and then send me the Coles notes so I am prepared! 😁
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LOL I just bought a new one by him, “Autumn Wisdom: Finding Meaning in Life’s Later Years.” We’ll see how I get along with THAT one!!! After discussing this one with Drollery the other night, though we’ve decided to take retirement off the table for two years. Maybe we’ll have time to prepare a little better. (But I’ll try to keep good notes!!! 😀 )
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One step at a time so the overwhelm doesn’t swamp you! It’s too easy sometimes to look at the overwhelm instead of slow and steady to the goal. I know, it’s easier said than done. Sounds like you’re doing all the right things !
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I think the thing that’s making me feel the most anxious is getting all the repairs done to the house before Drollery retires December 2017. We’ve taken care of three major things (plumbing fixed, new furnace, central air), but we have a long list of stuff to accomplish. I get really stressed when I think about THAT.
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Know the feeling. We’ve been renovating this house we’re in ever since we moved here back in 1976! And still going…. for us it has been a time factor for TRH, and money of course. We’re freehold, but never do any work until we have the money to pay for it. We’re fortunate that TRH is a skilled tradesman and does the work himself except for plumbing, electrics. It’s a huge saving. Hope you can achieve what you need to do so you can relax and enjoy retirement 🙂
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That makes three of us! 🙂
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MIDDLE PLACES. He suggests:
“◾Visit prior transitions
◾Take respites
◾Rub up against nature
◾Inventory your resources
◾Visualize ideal outcomes
◾Make a retreat
◾Pray in a new way”
I’m keeping these to reflect upon. This has been a really well done and thought provoking series of posts (the Middle Place Series – Possibly the Middle Earth Series???).
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Middle Earth! I like that! 😀
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“Rub up against nature” – I like that!
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You made me laugh, Jay. I ALMOST want to ask you what YOUR vision of that would be! LOL 😀
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I’m definitely checking this book out and thanks for sharing about what you are going through. Lots of processing here also in my life….bottom line I’m choosing love and connection over fear and separation 🙂
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Sounds like the logical choice to me. I hope everything goes well for you. I do love that book. In fact, after I posted this morning I got on Amazon and looked to see if he had any others. Merciful heavens I struck gold! I ended up buying six more of his little books, a couple of which will come in handy with the care group I’m involved in at church. I’m excited. Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting. It’s always comforting to know others can identify.
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Yes, the book is so inexpensive! I put it in my basket and I am buying it next time 🙂
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I stopped by your blog and realized I’d been there the other day! So glad to see you’ve posted again!
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Yes I did haha 🙂 I will see where this goes. It’s fun to blog, but I have a lot to learn!
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The good thing is, everyone does it different! You’ll find your style.
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Goodness you do surprise me that I have a little of that British “Stiff Upper Lip”. Here I go again talking. One Christmas David and myself went to Lincoln to do shopping for the weekend. Well we looked at the Cathedral and that was that, David left me on my own. Dinner that night I could not get one word out of him, no wonder everyone was looking at us, either that or the age difference. I’ll stop talking now.
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I would love to see the Lincoln Cathedral. I have a friend named Fiona that lives near there and she sent me pictures of the labyrinth inside. It’s a beautiful place.
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Lincoln Cathedral was a beautiful fascinating Cathedral, must admit not struck with the County that much.
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Well I expect to be in love with it all! 😀
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Change comes upon you when you least expect it sometimes. Do we all adapt to change, speaking from an English perspective and I stand to be corrected, we are too frightened to show our inner self, do we adapt to change I don’t think so. We struggle but to survive we have to adapt. In a partnership we should listen to each other work together to make it what we want it to be for what is left ahead. Does not always work out that way. Depends on the two people in that relationship. I hope some of this makes sense to you.
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Yep. I hear what you’re sayin’. Fortunately for us we talk all the time. Don’t keep the feelings about this stuff bottled up. In fact, we went on a date last night and got a piece of pie and a cup of coffee and chatted for over an hour. And get this! The manager picked up the tab on the pie! Not sure what that was all about. It was nice, though.
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He probably thought how happy you looked. My late Husband did not talk, even when he was violently attacked and left for dead by thieves he did not talk to me about it. He was as you know 30 years older than me, and RAF and all that, plus “The British Stiff Upper Lip” crap, I only have Irish Blood in my veins and love to talk (as you know only too well). Enjoy the next date that’s great.
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You like to talk for sure 😉 , but I think you’ve picked up a bit of that stiff upper lip, too, with all the crap you had to put up with over the years. 🙂
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New opportunities Cheryl. I’m enjoying my retirement – doing all the things I’ve not had time to do.
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I sure hope it works out that way for us. Right now we’re a little overwhelmed with how much it’s going to cost us to get Medicare when he quits work and we lose our insurance. We went to a class to help us figure it out. It’s about $549 a month. We’re kind of in shock. 😦
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