Not The Journey I Expected

Seven years ago today was my retirement party from Mayo Clinic. I wasn’t exactly retiring, as a month later I was planning to start my new vocation as a pastor, but I was retirement eligible, and so the clinic threw me a party on my last day. My coworkers gifted me with a hat with two coffee cups attached!

When I began working at Mayo I had expected to be there for 36 years. Given that I was just 29 when I began, 36 years seemed to be an awfully long ways away. But on that first day I didn’t envision ever working anywhere else. 27 years in things in my life had changed. You might say that there was a fork in the road and I began to travel a path leading in a different direction.

Seven years ago we arrived in Dulce and I began to serve as the pastor of the Jicarilla Apache Reformed Church. Robin, Kat and I arrived expecting that, if there was a good fit between the church and I, that we would be here for 10 years, when it would likely be time to truly retire.

As they say, that was then and this is now. Robin and I were empty-nesters when we married. A year later and we took in Kat and adopted her. We never anticipated that our family would grow again while we were in Dulce but as I type this we are a family of five, and the three children in the next room have begun watching movies for the sleepover they are having in the living room tonight.

Three children. Ages five, seven and thirteen. Tomorrow I’ll be 63 and one thing I clearly know at my age is that time really flies. Will there be three more years as pastor in Dulce in order to fulfill the original plan of 10 years? That is very likely, and perhaps a few years more. Yesterday I happened to run a few miles with someone who told me “age is just a number.” That may be true, but his number is 41 and mine is a fair bit beyond that. Today 70 does not seem so far away, nor too old to continue to serve in this ministry. This afternoon the possibilities beyond that are too far away for me to consider.

Looking back, to age 29 and my first day at Mayo, to today and 7 years in here in Dulce, this has not been the journey I expected. There have been dramatic peaks, with priceless views, as well as a few deep valleys.

Would I redo some of those earlier moments, if such a thing were possible? That is an interesting question, but the problem is that I probably would not end up in the place where I am today. This may not have been the journey I expected but it has been a journey that has been very good. The experiences of my past have led to the person that I am today, with the family I provide for and the ministry where I serve.

Not the journey I expected, but one in which I can look back and see the hand of God at work time and again. And from that perspective I’m pretty sure that the things are going on today are preparing me for the journey that lies ahead. I’ve even had a small glimpse of just that thing as since beginning this post, as someone stopped at the parsonage, looking for the pastor.

I do not know the course your life has taken. I don’t know what your joys or heartaches have been. I don’t know where the path changed, again and again, from the one you were expecting to travel. But I do know that if you are traveling with the Lord Jesus Christ the destination will be very good, however he happens to guide you there.