Embracing Your Future: Enhance the Second Half of Your Life with a Faith-Based Journey of Self-Discovery

By Kathy Herrick

When we are young, we learn how to live life by observing and learning from those around us. But what about when life moves into its second half? As we get older, changes and transitions happen quickly, and without guidance or people to watch and learn from their experiences, we may lose that sense of purposewho we think we are and what we know may suddenly no longer fit.

In Embracing Your Future, author and educator Kathy Herrick invites retirees, seniors, and anyone moving into the second half of life to use this faith-based, practical guide to self-discovery to aid their individual journeys and strive to embrace futures of joy and purpose. It can help anyone in this new stage of life to deepen friendships and strengthen their faith walk, showing how to live life with purpose once again.

Individuals or small study groups will find Embracing Your Future easy to use and enlightening, and topics include learning from the past, discovering identity, cultivating spiritual gifts, enjoying friendship, pursuing dreams and goals, finding purpose, leaving a legacy, and much more. Everyoneregardless of age and stagehas a purpose in the future, and rediscovering that purpose can be life changing as we embrace God and embrace our own unique futures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781973602736

Kathy Herrick

Kathy Herrick is a retired educator, and she felt a call to continue teaching with a focus on adult education, primarily exploring one’s journey in the second half of life. Currently co-coordinating a program at a church in Florida that leads participants through this journey, she has also written and shared a daily online Bible study for adults for the last eight years. Kathy has a heart for the Lord, and she has found the joy of the Lord in his ever-abiding love, in her family and friends, and in the knowledge that each day God has a purpose for each individual.

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Copyright © 2017 Kathy Herrick.

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THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-0274-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0273-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017914726

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/25/2017

Contents

Chapter 1: What Matters?

Chapter 2: Looking Back: Learning, Cherishing, Letting Go

Chapter 3: Identities: Who Am I? Whose Am I?

Chapter 4: Fruit of the Spirit: God’s GPS

Chapter 5: Finding Contentment; Bloom Where You’re Planted

Chapter 6: Heart-to-Heart Friends; Friends in Christ

Chapter 7: Spiritual Gifts; Unwrapping Our Gifts from God

Chapter 8: Dreams and Goals; Dream Big with God

Chapter 9: Finding Your Purpose; Serving Our Lord

Chapter 10: Your Legacy: Pass It On

Chapter 11: What I Learned

Preface

How do we do life? We each grew up watching our parents, teachers, and other significant adults in our lives to gain our clues. Those we watched were mostly in their twenties and thirties, perhaps pushing into their forties, and they were busy raising families, going to jobs, keeping house, spending time with friends, and being involved in outside activities like church, clubs, and sports. If we were lucky to have positive role models, we learned how to be a supportive family member, how to build relationships, and how to be a contributing member of society.

We watched, we learned, we grew up, and we did life. What we probably didn’t see clearly was how to do life when life moves into its second half. I think, too, that I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to think about my parents in that part of life, didn’t want to think about the day when they would be gone, so I didn’t. I didn’t want to think about my ever being in the second part of my own life, so I didn’t.

In our fifties and sixties, changes and transitions happen with rapidity; some we anticipate, but some take us by surprise. Something shook me up, though, as I moved into my fifties: When I tried to use strategies from the past to deal with current ups and downs, they didn’t seem to work anymore. Change flipped everything upside down. Who I thought I was suddenly didn’t fit any more.

How we defined ourselves for years as we raised families and were a part of the work world changed. How we navigated ups and downs in the past didn’t work so well in the present. How we found purpose had shifted or was gone. The changes came firing at us: professionally, personally, emotionally, and physically (I could go on, but I won’t). Our self-worth and self-view sometimes took a beating; we were suddenly not in charge, not the leader, not the parent raising children, and not a voice always listened to.

As we move from the first half of life to the second half, we need to deliberately focus on ourselves, past and present, and make decisions about how to live a future with purpose. Most probably, you have many years ahead of you. Improved health care and opportunities have redefined what aging and retirement look like for many people. The goal of this book is to help guide you in that process of self-exploration. It will encourage you to identify what matters to you now and to look at the impact your past experiences have had on you. We will look at the transitions inherent to this time in life and how to move through them in a faith-based manner. We will consider who we are, what God wants us to be, how we build relationships with others, and the importance of relationships and support at this time of life. This is a time of life to fully embrace our faith, to learn more about how God is preparing each of us to be fruitful in the future, and to understand that we have a critical role to play in His mission to the world, right now.

The text of each chapter includes reflection questions and spaces to jot down your thoughts, right in your book. If you are following this study on your own, this format will help guide you to a greater degree of self-understanding and growth. If you are using this book as a part of a group study, you will be ready to share when your group meets. Small groups are recommended, as they are a wonderful place to meet others and get to know them. They also provide an opportunity to support others and find personal support as you each explore your own journey and purpose in the future.

It is important to be there for others. As much as this is about your journey, helping you to better understand yourself, your faith walk, and moving toward your dreams, purpose, service, and legacy, there are times someone else may just need someone to listen, and that someone may be you. There also may be times you need someone to listen to you; the goal is that someone will be there for you too.

So let’s go exploring: uncover more about who we are, learn whose we are, and open wide the doors on a faith-filled, purposeful life in this second half of our lives. God has much for us to do. He has joy to surround us with and golden moments to treasure. Embrace the beautiful future God has prepared for you.

Kathy

Embracing Your Future is

dedicated to the women who have been a part of my life in this, the second half, and who have shown me the love of God through their example, their openness, and their honesty. They have each touched my life and helped me grow, given me insights, and brought to the surface a willingness to open up, listen, find purpose, chase a dream, and take a risk. Herein is the result of these beautiful individuals.

A special thanks to Lynda Ruter for writing and sharing her beautiful prayers which are found at the end of each chapter, and for her inspiration to be open to the possibilities God gives to us.

Chapter 1

What Matters?

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Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself.

—Matthew 22:37–39

What Matters to You?

As I held the fragile vase, a wedding gift to my great-grandparents nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, I gently ran my thumb across the satiny smooth surface. Looking at my hands encircling the vase, I visualized the hands of three other women in our family: my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all passed on now, but each an owner at some point of this vase. I sensed the presence of our four generations, four women, connected by this vase, but more importantly, connected by love, generation to generation.

Like the vase, our lives are fragile. Our time on earth is finite, and time passes quickly. Wasn’t it just yesterday we were in our thirties, busy with our jobs, perhaps raising children, leading clubs, and active in other organizations? Blink … and now here we are, retired or soon to be in the near future, many of our roles changed, searching for purpose for the next phase, looking for ways to fill minutes that were previously dedicated to all those responsibilities. Yes, life is fragile and quick, with no guarantee that we will have tomorrow, so it is critical that we carefully examine our lives, determine what it means to live fully, decide what our Lord is asking of us, and focus clearly on what matters today. And then, with laser-like focus, we must match up how we spend our time, talents, and treasures with what matters most to us.

I recently heard a presentation by a woman who survived a fire in her home that took the lives of her parents and her three young daughters. She said that before the fire, she had been concerned about her job and often missed her daughters’ activities because of it. She pushed organic foods on them and worried about toys strewn on the floor and unmade beds. Losing her daughters and parents in the fire changed everything; she stopped and pushed aside the rush of daily life. She realized her job, the organic foods, and the neat house didn’t matter. It was the love, the conversations, the snuggling, and the moments of just being together that made life worth living. She said she would give anything to have time with her daughters to do it over; their lives would be different, and the way she matched up what she believed mattered and how they all lived their lives would be different. She touched everyone who heard her story.

The goal in this chapter is to uncover what really matters to you. You will be considering ways to structure your life so that your focus, actions, and legacy all match what matters to you.

Reflection

If your home had a fire, what would you save?

If you knew you had only one day left to live, what would you do? Who would you want to see? What would you want to say?

What might others remember of your life one hundred years from now?

What experiences in your life have changed what you value? In what ways?

Focus on What Matters; Let Go of What Does Not

When answering What matters? the first word for many is love. God tells us about love: Love your neighbor as yourself, For God so loved the world, Love one another. Love as God loves us, deep in the heart love. With the understanding that love is primary, what else would you answer if asked, What matters?

In the second half of your life, you still have a future, a tomorrow, and God still has a purpose for you in your life. It’s a time many people stop and look back, rifling through old pictures and mementos, perhaps studying genealogy, reading old journals, remembering, thinking, and feeling. It’s a time to look in the rear-view mirror and try to understand who you were in the past and what mattered to you then, a time to examine successes and difficulties, to look carefully at changes and transitions. Those big moments stand out, but take a minute to let yourself remember those everyday times: average days, the natural rhythm that was your daily life. These small moments may not have seemed important: the opportunity to touch a shoulder, to whisper, I love you, kiss a scraped knee, listen to a dream; days of normalcy matter. Normal is where joy lives; it is where smiles come easily and where God provides opportunities