Second Calling

OK, Annette and Carol and anyone else at a crossroads! I've just finished reading "Second Calling: Finding Passion and Purpose for the Rest of Your Life" by Dale Hanson Bourke, who was a superwoman-type business executive, also editor of Today's Christian Woman at one time, currently volunteering with groups like World Vision and International Justice Mission.

These things really spoke to me:

ABOUT GETTING OLDER--

God, as it turns out, doesn't really care if we are sagging or graying or aching. In God's economy, the fact that we are becoming less physically attractive may be just the way he wants us. God is mostly concerned with one aspect of us: our hearts. He wants them to be in tip-top shape. He wants them strong, responsive and enthusiastic.

WHAT REALLY MATTERS--

To come to a place where I must slow down a bit and consider what I'm doing is a gift from God. I don't want to waste any more time running after "the good that is not the best," as Oswald Chambers puts it.

It's not a loss of ambition; it's a willingness to find a new identity and to let that identity be defined by a holy calling rather than what other people believe you should be doing. What strikes me is how counterintuitive this sense is. Few decisions made in our second stage of life represent a natural progression toward what has been built in the first half of life. It's as if we have to completely turn our backs on our first-half identities in order to invest fully in our second callings.

One of the most surprising aspects of this new season of my life is a strange disinterest in goal setting. My goal setting has often been replaced by praying and a profound sense that if God doesn't set my goal, it isn't worth achieving. Prayer is our passport to the greatest adventure of our lives. If we do nothing else in the second half of life, we must learn to pray. In fact, I am beginning to believe that prayer itself is our primary calling. Everything else is just gravy.

I'm excited about what God is going to do with my life when I retire, but I think the thing that hit me the hardest was this quote: "The Christian life can only be lived in the present." I need to quit trying to figure out what my future holds. When people ask me what I'm going to do when I retire, which happens EVERY DAY, I guess I'll just say that I'll know when God tells me! I have a couple of visions that could be God-given, but time will tell. I don't even NEED to know right now...