On reaching retirement age

I'm so very thankful for all the wonderful things God has given me over the years, and now he's given me the opportunity to serve him in a different way.

Twenty years ago there was a conversation where we shared to whom we were responsible. My list was very long. I was accountable to the church and the people I worked for and with. I was responsible to denominational structures in France. I was also accountable to my home church which had sent me to France. There was also the mission who were there to support and take care of us. Then to the many people who were contributing generously to our support. It's good to have accountability and I rarely found any of this to be a problem.

From now on, however, we'll be paid increasingly exclusively from our own resources, to which we have contributed over the years. Voices that once were determinative will now become consultative. We'll appreciate people's advice and counsel, but we will have much more freedom in what we engage with, and what we don't engage in.

In addition we hope to have more free time to visit family and friends whom we have neglected, sometimes flagrantly, for twenty years. 

And we have a grand-daughter on whom to dote and with whom to become increasingly besotted. It is hard to convey the visceral joy she brings.

I also thankful to have made it this far without financial, sexual, moral or doctrinal disaster. It's not through my strength of character. Far better people than I have veered off course.

So I'm extremely thankful.